Social networking is definitely on the rise all around the world. Various websites help users connect to friends, colleagues, and family members all across the globe. However, a software on Facebook is taking “networking” to an all new level.
Recently, Courtney Purvin got a suggestion to reconnect with an old family friend who had played the piano at her wedding four years ago. As normal as this may sound, unfortunately, the friend had passed away in April. This is not an isolated incident as many users have had such experience which can only be described as shocking. The software gives users updates on a friend’s birthday, or gives suggestions to reconnect to a friend with whom the user has not spoken to in a while over Facebook. Though this is helpful, what happens when users pass away?
This problem will only continue to grow as Facebook, which was once a haven for youngsters, is now being joined mostly by users above the age of 65 years. In May 2010, 6.5 million users of that age group joined Facebook, which is thrice the number of users of the same group in May 2009. This creates an “age old” problem of sorts for Facebook as the mortality rate of this new increasing age group on Facebook is high.
At first, Facebook would just delete the account of the deceased but this has changed over time. Ever since the Virginia Tech massacre, friends and family of victims pleaded with Facebook to not delete their accounts as it would help those still grieving to post messages on the deceased’s wall. Facebook now also recognizes the importance of preserving these pages as the mourning process can be shared online. To this effect, now the deceased users profile can be used as a tribute page by removing some contact and personal information but maintaining the page giving the user’s friends the opportunity to post on his/her wall.
Unfortunately, the process to memorialize an account is not really known to many. One has to fill a form and provide some proof of death like an obituary or a news article along with the form. Once this is verified by the Facebook team, the page of that particular user is then memorialized. However, this process is not foolproof either as a namesake’s page can easily be memorialized; just ask Mr. Simon Thulbourn, who lost access to his Facebook account similarly.
Hopefully, this process of memorializing a page will be known to all soon enough to avoid some unwanted, and scary, surprises.
