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November 8, 2013
By NightOwl SILVER, Anacortes, Washington
NightOwl SILVER, Anacortes, Washington
5 articles 3 photos 12 comments

Christians have the Bible to teach them what happens to their soul after they die- but what happens to a person's social media page after they're gone?

“When someone leaves us, they don't leave our memories or our social networks. To reflect that reality, we created the idea of "memorialized" profiles as a place where people can save and share their memories of those who've passed," said Max Kelly, Chief Security Officer of Facebook on the Facebook blog.

In this new digital age, problems can appear just as fast as your inbox can with notifications. People are now wondering about how to handle a person's social media page when they are no longer able to log on themselves.

Facebook has implemented a new feature of "memorializing" past user's accounts. The action has to be done by someone who knew the person well and they need to provide a URL of the obituary or other proof of death. If the heir chooses to, he or she can have the account and all of its posts deleted. Twitter also has a similar policy that allows family members to either delete the account or save a backup of the old tweets.

When asked whether or not she would want a loved one’s Facebook page left up, a student said, “I wouldn’t want to share it with the public because it’s a personal thing and those who I want to know will know.” Yet another student said, “I would personally think [it would be nice] if somebody or Facebook turned my page into a memory or a memorial page and if someone could be the admin of that page.”

ANECDOTE:When my aunt died unexpectedly, having her Facebook made into a memorial page helped me to see what kind of person she was. Some people might gawk at the idea of such a public site hosting personal messages, but reading the kind, loving memories that her friends had of her gave me a new perspective on somebody that I had not really known.


The author's comments:
I wrote this for my school newspaper, the KHS Quill. To see more articles, go to khsquill.com

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