Social Media as Thanatechnology

ABSTRACT: My essay examines the growing role of social media in shaping the experience of grief and the construction of memory. It analyzes the narrative forms through which mourning is expressed online, giving rise to what is commonly called “online mourning.” These practices transform the traditional symbolic relationship between the presence and absence of the deceased by creating a public space where digital traces of the dead—such as their social media profiles—remain visible. Social media can thus function both as a symbolic bridge between the living and the afterlife and as a place where communities of mourners form around shared grief. These “thanatechnological” practices intersect with emerging rituals, such as QR codes on graves or virtual cemeteries, giving mourning a new public dimension.