Study claims accounts of dead people on Facebook might surpass the number of accounts of those who are alive, in the coming 50 years.
Accounts of dead people on Facebook might surpass the number of accounts of those who are alive, in the coming 50 years, a study has found.
«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,» said the lead author Carl Ohman.
The study published in the journal ‘Big Data and Society’, predicted that about 1.4 billion Facebook members will die before 2100. If the situation continues, the dead would be surpassing the number of alive, by 2070.
«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,» said Carl.
He added, «But the totality of the deceased user profiles also amounts to something larger than the sum of its parts.
