Blog #3: Facebook and The Dead

While reading Facebook of the Dead from What If? by xkcd, I learned that Facebook will have more profiles of dead people than living ones by the year 2060 or the 2130s.  Based on a US age/usage data, by the end of this year, there should be a total of approximately 290,000 Facebook users who will have died.  Although we don't know how long Facebook will last, based on other social websites, we can assume that the popularity will decline, and in that scenario the profiles of dead users will begin to outnumber the profiles of the living users. 

It's creepy to think about such as a scenario, but death is a certainty.  Have you ever wondered what happens to the Facebook account of a person who has died? Facebook of the Dead, answered a lot of the questions I had.  Questions brought up in the blog are: "Should accounts remain accessible? What should be made private? Should next-of-kin have the right to access email? Should memorial pages have comments? How do we handle trolling and vandalism? Should people be allowed to interact with dead user accounts? What lists of friends should they show up on?"

Those are questions I've never really ever thought of, because I have never personally had anyone close to me die, who's had a Facebook.  However, I know many who use Facebook to write on walls of those who have passed.  It's a great way of expressing their emotion to their loved ones and hold on to their existence.  Deleting the deceased person's account entirely may become overwhelming to those trying to mourn, but having everyone constantly remind them that that person is dead could also come to a shock.

I think that families should be able to access their dead loved one's account.  Death is a hard topic to discuss about, because people deal with it in so many different  ways... What do you think?