New Facebook Feature Legacy Contact Allows Users to Continue with Their Online Activity Even After Death

Facebook on February 12 rolled out a new feature called 'Legacy Contact' which gives users a platform for remembering and celebrating their lives or those of their loved ones following death.

Legacy Contact allows individuals to decide what happens to their Facebook account when they die. Through their security settings, they can assign a "legacy contact," or steward, to manage the account. On behalf of the deceased account holder, the legacy contact is able to post an obituary or message, update profile pictures and cover photos, respond to new friend requests, and moderate the posting of condolences and memories from existing friends. With additional permission from the account holder, the legacy contact can download an archive of profile information and posts. Facebook will also make changes to "memorialized" accounts, adding the word "remembering" before the person's name.

The doctoral work of Jed Brubaker of the University of California-Irvine provided the conceptual basis for the new Facebook feature. Brubaker first published a study involving Facebook in 2013. In May 2014, he released another one called "Stewarding a Legacy: Responsibilities & Relationships in the Management of Post-mortem Data" which posited postmortem solutions meeting the needs of both account holders and their survivors.Brubaker has now been retained by the social media company as academic consultant in the creation, testing and release of the Legacy Contact feature. Said he: "This area -- the role death plays in social networking -- is my expertise, and Facebook has taken five years of my research and translated parts of it into this important feature....The most gratifying aspect of Facebook's new features is knowing that these changes will make Facebook a more supportive space for people during challenging times."

Facebook's own product developers took into consideration Brubaker's insights and adopted some of his recommendations in determining how best to improve the memorialization experience and give people more after-death control over the accounts they leave behind.

According to Brubaker, the concept of 'steward' centers on individuals caring for accounts and data they do not own. People's social media identities persist after they die, and even though no one is managing their profiles, others continue to use these spaces. In the context of Facebook, stewardship provides a way to tend postmortem accounts and balance the needs of the dead with the needs of those left behind. Additionally, stewards let the online community collectively grieve and memorialize a departed loved one.