Zombie-book: Dead Facebook users to outnumber the living by 2070
Facebook could give rise to a wave of zombie profiles as the dead is predicted to outnumber the living on the social media platform within 50 years, according to a new study.
A University of Oxford study found an estimated 15 million fewer Facebook users than in the previous year’s report, with declines heavily concentrated among younger people.
The popularity of Facebook has steadily declined with teen users in recent years, as other platforms like Instagram and Snapchat have continued to rise, according to Socialmediatoday.com.
Based on the rapidly diminishing number of profiles, the academics estimated at least 1.4 billion Facebook users would die before 2100.
This figure, combined with a rapidly declining user rate in the younger demographic, could mean the dead will outnumber the living on Facebook by 2070, the study predicted.
The concern with these zombie profiles is Facebook will have access to a huge amount of personal data and history, raising questions about how this data and information could be used after users have died.
“These statistics give rise to new and difficult questions around who has the right to all this data, how should it be managed in the best interests of the families and friends of the deceased and its use by future historians to understand the past,” lead author of the study, Carl Öhman explained to the Evening Standard.
“The management of our digital remains will eventually affect everyone who uses social media, since all of us will one day pass away and leave our data behind.”
But who owns or controls this data after the user has died remains a grey area - is it Facebook, or the deceased’s relatives?
The study’s authors have urged Facebook to engage with historians and archivists to curate and catalogue the data left behind, so future generations might access the digital heritage to understand their history.
“This is not just about finding solutions that will be sustainable for the next couple of years, but possibly for many decades ahead,” co-author David Wilson told the Standard.
What happens to your Facebook account if you die?
Facebook users can decide what happens to their account when they pass on.
They can can either choose to have the account permanently deleted, with all online activity wiped from history, or the account may become “memoralised”.
To activate the memorial option, a legacy contact may be selected who can inform Facebook of the user’s death.
The word ‘Remembering’ will then appear next to the name on the profile, and other users may share memories on the timeline.
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