Eternal Logins: Life After (Digital) Death
In the analog age, death brought a kind of finality. Belongings were boxed, letters yellowed, photo albums closed. But now, death lives on — in feeds, inboxes, playlists, and group chats.
We scroll past the birthday notification of someone who’s gone. A dead friend’s Spotify still shows what they “liked.” Old texts pop up during searches. The internet doesn’t know how to grieve — and neither do we, when our dead are still tagged in photos and still “appear offline.”
Digital immortality wasn’t the plan, but here we are.
When Data Haunts
Social media platforms have only recently begun to address posthumous accounts. Facebook allows memorialization. Google has an “Inactive Account Manager.” But most digital trails are simply... left behind.
This creates emotional echoes. We can visit a deceased person’s feed and reread their jokes. Watch their last TikTok. Hear their voice on a voicemail. It can feel like comfort — or like re-traumatization.
And then there’s the eerie commercialization: AI models trained on a person’s voice. Deepfake avatars created by grieving families. Chatbots of the deceased trained on their old texts. What starts as remembrance can slip into the uncanny.
Where is the line between honoring the dead — and refusing to let go?
Who Owns Your Afterlife?
Death now comes with legal ambiguity. Who owns your digital identity? Your photos? Your YouTube channel? If someone dies with a monetized account or a crypto wallet, what happens?
Digital estate planning is still murky legal terrain. Most users don’t prepare for their online death — and many families are left navigating platforms’ inconsistent policies or hacking into accounts just to recover memories.
In a world where identity is as much digital as physical, we need new rituals, rights, and responsibilities.
Towards a Better Digital Afterlife
Maybe we need new language for digital loss. Maybe grief now needs screen-time limits too.
More importantly, maybe we should live with the awareness that our online selves might outlive us — and ask: what do we want to leave behind? Not just data, but meaning.
Instead of erasure or eternal presence, perhaps the goal is gentle fading — like a well-worn book, not an auto-playing video.