What happens to your social media when you die — and how to prepare now
I see dead people… on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media accounts.
Herman Cain, for example, is tweeting a lot of critical posts about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. And this is odd, because Herman Cain died more than a month ago. (No sense in letting all those followers go to waste, I suppose?)
What’s happening with Herman Cain’s account, however, reflects a growing problem that also affects those of us who weren’t the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza. It’s a harsh truth, but people die every day.
And while some of us may think about a will, and arrangements for those who depend on us, such as children or pets, we generally don’t give much thought to our social media accounts.
This wasn’t a huge problem at first, as most users of social media tend to be younger. But will it become a growing problem in the future?
How many dead people are on Facebook today?
What will happen in the future?
And what is Facebook, and other social media platforms, doing to handle the growing number of (literally) dead accounts?
Let’s find out.
Dead Folk On the Face Book
First, let’s get a sense of just how absolutely massive Facebook is.
As of Q2 2020, Facebook has more than 2.7 billion monthly users. That’s more than 270,000,000,000 users. This trend has been growing pretty steadily ever since the platform came into existence. If we include Instagram, WhatsApp, and other Facebook-owned platforms, the number tops 3 billion.
So far, estimates suggest that there are somewhere between 10 million to 30 million dead users with on Facebook. That’s a pretty low fraction, but this makes sense, since the user base, especially in the early years of the platform’s existence, tended to skew younger and be more focused in countries with a higher standard of living.
30 million dead people seems like a lot. But divided by the total number of accounts (3 billion), and we see that about 1% of all Facebook users are dead.
It’s estimated that about 8,000 Facebook users die every day; however, Facebook is also adding about 500,000 new profiles every day, which means that the percentage of dead people will, assuming current trends continue, remain low.
If things kept going this way forever, Facebook would always have about 1.6% dead people. But that’s not the way mortality works.
The Future Facebook Graveyard
It’s inevitable; at some point, the number of dead people on Facebook will outnumber the living people. (At that point, I predict that Plants vs. Zombies is going to have a resurgence.)
But when? When will we hit that point?
It all depends on growth.
In a recent paper, researchers Carl J Öhman and David Watson looked at the number of dead people predicted to be found on Facebook under various growth scenarios, and determined when the number of dead individuals would surpass the number of living ones.
Scenario A: No new users. Facebook closes its doors to any new sign-ups. The number of dead accounts will surpass the living in ~50 years, around 2065, and the platform will be 98% dead people by 2100.
Obviously, this scenario is exaggerated. Facebook isn’t going to stop allowing new accounts.
Scenario B: Facebook continues growing at its current rate (13% per year) until it reaches full saturation in its markets (when everyone has an account). This holds off the zombie takeover for a while, and the dead accounts surpass the living accounts around 2110.
Interestingly, the mortality depends a lot on region. Even in 2110, in this scenario, many of the deaths will be from developing nations, in Africa and Asia.
Of course, Facebook isn’t likely to reach 100% penetration in every market, so the true answer likely lies somewhere between these two scenarios.
It’s inevitable; at some point, the number of dead people on Facebook will outnumber the living people.
The Fate of the Dead Accounts
The digital world is one of the few places where it’s relatively easy to just let dead accounts… well, keep on living.
Unlike the physical world, there are practically no space constraints in cyberspace. And since dead people don’t generate much new content (Herman Cain excepted), it costs relatively little to keep dead accounts around, compared to live ones.
Facebook now offers two options for dead accounts:
- Turn them into memorials. The account is flagged as dead, but all the content stays up, and friends and family will be allowed to share “memories” on their timeline.
- Flag them to be deleted. If someone notifies Facebook that the account holder is dead, and this option is selected, the account will be permanently deleted.
What about on other sites?
- On Tinder, accounts are inactivated after ~1 month of inactivity, so dead people are removed fairly consistently from the app. (Sorry, you can’t just assume that you’re not getting responses because you’re going after dead people.)
- On Twitter, relatives can request the deletion of an account — but Twitter warns that you will need to provide identification and a death certificate. Many aren’t likely to do this, which means that the number of dead Twitter accounts will continue to rise.
- Instagram and other Facebook sites follow the same policy as Instagram.
- Google also allows relatives to submit a request for access or deletion of an account, although they state that these requests are only approved “after a careful review.”
Many of these sites now support allowing users to set their own preferences for what happens in the event of their death. On Facebook, these are labeled as memorialized accounts, and you may want to take a moment to choose a trusted person to be the legacy contact.
There are as many as 30 million dead people with Facebook accounts, but the social media giant is simply so massive that these numbers are dwarfed by the total user count. With more than 3 billion active users, ‘dead people accounts’ are likely only around 1% of the total user base.
However, this will shift over time, as these accounts stack up. It’s likely that there will be more dead accounts than live accounts by sometime between 2065 and 2110.
Even if you’re feeling healthy, it’s worth setting the memorialization settings for your social media accounts — or at least put the names and passwords into writing, so that a relative can put up a nice message, or possibly delete your browsing history.
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September 22, 2020 at 01:11AM
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How Many Dead People Are on Facebook? | by Sam Westreich, PhD | The Startup | Sep, 2020 - Medium
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