Coping with loss: When should you unfriend the dead?
Grieving in the digital age has become trickier as our lives are more intertwined with social media.
With 60 per cent of Australians on Facebook, people will have had a digital interaction with a loved one who has passed away.
Psychology academic Jessica Blower from the University of the Sunshine Coast said that her research has found higher levels of anxiety and stress among people who interact with their deceased loved ones on Facebook. She told The ABC:
"What we are hearing now anecdotally is because of Facebook currently capitalising on nostalgia," she said.
"Individuals are feeling more and more that they need to defriend the dead, or at least deactivate the follow functions, so they are not getting some of these reminders."
She said she wouldn’t go as far to tell people not to share their grief online, but has suggested that people ask themselves beforehand: What do they hope to get out of it?
"Then use that information to reflect, if they can, on whether what they're doing is best for them in the moment — a very hard ask during a time of bereavement."
Dr Kerry Gruber Vella has said that she has increasingly witnessed the effects of people managing Facebook accounts after their loved one has passed.
"The sad thing is that for some of those people hosting those pages, it's part of their process for managing their own grief," she said.
"You might be looking at Facebook for five minutes when you have a break at work, not thinking that you're going to look at that [grief-related] content, and then it comes up and you're flooded with difficult emotions but you have to go back to work."
One suggestion from Dr Gruber Vella is that you limit the accounts’ posts from appearing on your feed.
"One of the things you can choose to do is go to your friend's Facebook page and look at it when you choose to," she said.
"If you do that and you can look at the comments, it can help you cope with that experience and process."
Tama Leaver has said that Facebook has responded to criticism about the unwanted posts and notifications from deceased Facebook friends.
"There were quite a number of people who had passed away and their algorithms started recommending people become friends with deceased people, which of course was very unsettling," he said.
"They've extended that to include a legacy account, where you can nominate someone to have limited access to edit your account after you pass away," Dr Leaver said.
However, Dr Leaver says that there are “a lot of issues to be considered” surrounding death and Facebook.
"If I am posting things to my friends, should I be reminiscing about something we did years ago, and how much detail should I share?”