Digital Generation and Posthumous Interaction:

A Descriptive Analysis in Social Networks

Juliana Micolino Cabral

1 a

, Cristiano Maciel

1,3 b

, Vanice Canuto Cunha

1 c

Jivago Medeiros Ribeiro

1,2 d

and Daniele Trevisan

3 e

Institute of Computer Science, Federal University of Mato Grosso, Brazil

Graduate Program in Computer Science, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Graduate Program in Education, Federal University of Mato Grosso, Brazil

Keywords:

Digital Memorial, Posthumous Interaction, Social Networks, Digital Legacy, Digital Generation.

Abstract:

The large number of data that can be left by someone when they die it’s undeniable, mainly on social network

proﬁles, which are fed for years with varied information by the users. These proﬁles can serve as a way of

remembering loved ones, and the way users are interacting with posthumous proﬁles can help in discovering

how to deal with this new sensitive topic. Thus, this research seeks to investigate and understand the posi-

tioning of the Digital Generation on posthumous interaction in social networks and what are the main features

that users ﬁnd important for the design of proﬁle pre-conﬁgurations. From the methodological viewpoint,

the research used bibliographic review, development and application of online questionnaire and descriptive

statistical analysis with data crossing to obtain the results. The results are compared with other generations

participating in the research and with other published research on the subject.

1 INTRODUCTION

In the digital age in which we live, it is to be expected

that children born in this environment will become in-

creasingly digital. Tapscott (Tapscott, 2010) named

the generation born amid the growth of Digital Gen-

eration technology: those belonging to this generation

do not know a world without internet and take advan-

tage of it with great naturalness.

An important part of the advancement of the inter-

net is social networks, which are widely used around

the world, in which users share on a global scale the

most varied information, such as photos, videos, com-

ments and even status updates. For Carrol and Ro-

mano (Carroll and Romano, 2010) the technology in-

creased the scale on which we produced data so that

if asked the amount of digital creations per day we

probably wouldn’t be able to enumerate them all. This

large accumulation of data, for Grimm and Chiasson

(Grimm and Chiasson, 2014), is transformed into a

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1751-6436

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2431-8457

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0986-3374

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4343-3415

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9328-5663

digital trail of our lives.

Thus, there is a need to develop existing tools or

improve applications so that they become able to deal

satisfactorily with this demand that will only grow

over time. For this, it is necessary to overcome the

barrier of taboos wrapped in this theme to discover,

from the point of view of the user, what are the pos-

sible computational solutions considering values and

social (Maciel and Pereira, 2012).

One of these taboo themes is death. In social net-

works, users’ proﬁles can persist beyond their deaths,

and can be transformed into digital legacies, through

memorials (Maciel and Pereira, 2014). When a user

of a social network chooses to keep their proﬁle after

death, it creates a space for new interactions, and is

also a way to preserve the digital identity built during

years of use and its functionalities gain new mean-

ings, such as visits to view photos and the writing of

farewell messages. In addition, these interactions can

help during the grieving process and are a way to re-

member loved ones (D

oveling et al., 2015).

Among the various users of social networks, the

following research is asked: what are the perceptions

of the Digital Generation, which was born in the midst

of technology, about the legacies left in these net-

Cabral, J., Maciel, C., Cunha, V., Ribeiro, J. and Trevisan, D.

Digital Generation and Posthumous Interaction: A Descriptive Analysis in Social Networks.

DOI: 10.5220/0010442105070516

In Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2021) - Volume 2, pages 507-516

ISBN: 978-989-758-509-8

507

works by deceased people? From the point of view of

the objective, this work seeks to investigate and un-

derstand the positioning of this Digital Generation on

posthumous interaction in social networks and what

are the main functionalities that users ﬁnd important

for the design of proﬁle pre-conﬁgurations in these

networks. For this, the research used bibliographic

review, development and application of online ques-

tionnaire and descriptive statistical analysis with data

crossing to obtain the results. In this stage, the results

are compared with other generations participating in

the research and with other published research on the

subject. The results can assist system designers in the

systemic treatment of the digital legacy.

The article was structured as follows: after the

introduction, the theoretical framework is presented,

which introduces important concepts for the work.

After that, the methodology used in the research is

described, followed by the results found. Finally, we

have the ﬁnal considerations and references used dur-

ing the development of the research.

2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

To better understand the themes of this work, it is nec-

essary to explain concepts about digital legacy, digital

generation and posthumous interaction, treated below.

2.1 Digital Legacy and Social Networks

For Crocker and Mcleod (Crocker and McLeod,

2019), a legacy can be considered anything (mate-

rial, emotional or digital) that leaves behind a lasting

effect, and can be considered a message for the fu-

ture. According to the authors, a digital legacy ”[...]

it’s a modern extension of what we leave when we

die” (documents, music, photography, playlists, view-

ing history and social media proﬁles) and not just the

physical devices on which we create the data.

Thus, the collection of digital assets, analogous to

the collection of material assets, composes the legacy

of an individual. It follows that the more people die,

the more legacies end up being lost or become inac-

cessible to family members and loved ones due to ig-

norance or disinterest in their treatment in the digital

world. The digital legacy and the means for the allo-

cation of posthumous data (Maciel and Pereira, 2013)

are part of the great challenges of research on Human-

Computer Interaction (HCI) in Brazil (Baranauskas

et al., 2014).

For Carroll and Romano (Carroll and Romano,

2010), ”a digital legacy is the sum of the digital pos-

sessions you left for others. As the shift to digital con-

tinues, the digital possessions left will become most

of its legacy.” In this way, much of the memories and

contributions left by someone at the end of their life

can be found online. About how users expect a dig-

ital legacy-oriented design to behave Khalid and Dix

(Khalid and Dix, 2014) did a study with Facebook

users and concluded that these applications are ex-

pected to be more based on virtues, considering so-

cial and moral impacts, than on ensuring usability

and effectiveness. Maciel and Pereira (Maciel and

Pereira, 2014) indicate the inclusion of users in de-

sign processes and decision-making about the desti-

nation of the legacy, in research that seeks to address

this theme.

Unlike the past legacy from generation to genera-

tion, through stories and physical documents, a digital

legacy has the ability to stay much longer and be ex-

panded. Family and friends, using the available tech-

nologies, will be able to follow legacies and ensure

that it continues in a more practical way and without

geographical barriers (Crocker and McLeod, 2019).

It is also important to remember that the data left

on social networks is part of the legacy that users

have created during their lifetime and need to be taken

into account. Some social networks have a stan-

dard procedure if they detect the death of a proﬁle,

such as Facebook that memorialized the proﬁle with-

out an heir to manage it, if the user wants to specify

whether they prefer their account to be deleted or in-

dicate an heir contact for their memorial, they must

conﬁgure these options to still live (de Toledo et al.,

2019)(Viana et al., 2017b). For Carroll and Romano

(Carroll and Romano, 2010), online memorials are

particularly unique because they ”transcend space and

time”, allowing visitation at any time and from any-

where, and can be considered a legacy and a way for

the individual to be remembered. It is worth men-

tioning that there are some varieties of them, such

as memorials in social networks, virtual cemeteries

and sites dedicated to memorials. They keep memo-

ries and change people’s relationship with grief, Wal-

ter (Walter, 2015) concluded in his studies that inter-

active social networks have made mourning again a

community experience, rather than something private,

and show that the practice of sharing losses online is

enhanced by the most intense change in the culture of

grief since the 19th Century.

For D

oveling, Harju and Shavit (D

oveling et al.,

2015), one of the central areas in research on digital

memorials and online mourning is the act of ”remem-

bering” the people we love. For them the loss of a

loved one is a time when most people are looking for

someone who can empathize with pain and share their

experiences. Thus, digital memorials on social net-

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508

works, such as those on the Facebook page, contribute

to maintaining ties with the deceased and, for the au-

thors (D

oveling et al., 2015), ”losing such a digital

artifact can cause regret and should not be ignored”.

Regarding the problems presented in these memori-

als, Gach and Brubaker (Gach and Brubaker, 2020)

pointed out that the difﬁculties in managing posthu-

mous data are due to disconnect between how sys-

tems technically implement trust with people’s expec-

tations of the system. For Ueda, Verhalen and Maciel

(Ueda et al., 2019), digital memorials lack, among

others, sensitivity in the case of cultural aspects and,

according to Pereira, Maciel and Leit

ao (Pereira et al.,

2016), it is remarkable the lack of some data in a

social network proﬁle transformed into a memorial,

such as the date of death.

Although we have works in the context of the lega-

cies left in social media memorials, there is still a lack

of studies that reveal what the different generations

think about this issue, photo of this research.

2.2 Posthumous Interaction

Despite the taboos that exist around the culture of

death, the living constantly interact with books, ﬁlms,

music and products that were created, in life, by

someone who has already passed away. Thus, tech-

nology acts as a bridge, promoting interactions in a

broader and more accessible way with the dead and

their goods, in which often the user himself does not

realize that he is already digitally interacting with

death (Massimi et al., 2011).

For Maciel and Pereira (Maciel and Pereira,

2012), posthumous interaction is conceptualized as:

”To this interaction of systems with data of dead peo-

ple, or users with people killed via the system, we call

it posthumous interaction, since it is said posthumous

everything that happens after the death of someone”

(Houaiss, 2001). One fact highlighted by the authors

(Maciel and Pereira, 2012) is that posthumous char-

acterized only the interaction with the data of those

who have passed away. The data without itself is not

posthumous, being produced by the user in life and

left behind. Thus, the act of visiting the proﬁle of

someone who is no longer among us to remember the

person or the simple feeling of longing already char-

acterizes a posthumous interaction, in which the user

will interact with data that has been left behind.

2.3 Digital Generation

There is in the literature the description of different

generations, by different authors, which can be a little

confusing since different studies, besides using differ-

ent nomenclatures, also use divergent time clippings,

according to the criteria and events used to categorize

generations.

Since the chronology and nomenclatures referred

to each generation are not deﬁnitive, it is erroneous to

state that a person has characteristics of a given gener-

ation or that he has inferior technological knowledge

in relation to the generations after him. What is evi-

denced by Reeves and Oh (Reeves and Oh, 2008) is

that the relativisation between generation and nomen-

clature is made in an attempt to distinguish each gen-

eration, but the predominant factor in this character-

ization process is the history of each subject, which

makes it different perception if it is based solely on

the dates.

The term ”Digital Generation” is used by Tapscott

(Tapscott, 2010) in his book ’The Hour of Digital

Generation’, in which he studies the Internet Gener-

ation, which grew in the midst of the digital boom

that previous generations have not experienced since

the early years of life, and how Information and Com-

munication Technologies (ICT) have shaped the way

they act, think, choose, and consume in the day-to-

day life of these people. The author presents eight

deﬁning characteristics of this generation: i) they seek

freedom in everything they do; ii) love to customize

and customize; iii) are the new researchers; iv) seek

integrity and business openness when deciding what

to buy and where to work; v) want entertainment at

work, in education and in personal life; vi) are the

generation of collaboration and relationship; vii) need

speed, mainly in communication and viii) are innova-

tive.

In this work, we seek to understand how, these

characteristics, shaped by the constant use of digital

technologies since the ﬁrst years of life by the Inter-

net Generation (1977-1997), as described by Tapscott

(Tapscott, 2010), inﬂuence the perception of this gen-

eration in relation to the digital legacy. Also, believ-

ing that many of these characteristics may be present

in the generation following the Internet Generation;

Generation Next or Z, beginning in 1998 to present

for Tapscott (Tapscott, 2010) and beginning, in 2001

for Reeves and Oh (Reeves and Oh, 2008), we have

included Generation Z in our studies at the same level

as the Internet Generation. Considering, also, i) the

age of the individuals of Generation Z, when the book

(Tapscott, 2010) was released and its age in the devel-

opment of this research and ii) Generation Z, although

shaped differently from Y, also grew immersed in the

TICs. Thus, in this work we will use the term Digital

Generations to encompass two generations: Genera-

tion Y or Millennial (1981-2000) and Generation Z

or Centennial (2001-current), both in the deﬁnition of

Digital Generation and Posthumous Interaction: A Descriptive Analysis in Social Networks

509

Reeves and Oh (Reeves and Oh, 2008).

3 METHODOLOGY

A quantitative approach of exploratory character was

adopted, based on bibliographic research, with the

purpose of acquiring greater knowledge of the re-

searched themes. To ﬁnd out how the Digital Gen-

eration relates to death, in the item social networks,

it was needed to reach a diverse audience that prefer-

ably had frequent contact with technology. The on-

line questionnaire proved to be the best option for

achieving the goal, and Google Forms, the platform

that provides conditions for questionnaire distribution

and data collection.

Thus, the distribution in social networks favored

a greater adherence of volunteers who ﬁt the proﬁle

sought by the research. Furthermore, those belong-

ing to the other generations were not denied the op-

portunity to participate in the research and reﬂect on

the theme however their data will not be explored in

this work, whose focus is only on the Digital Gener-

ation. Thus, of the 247 participants in total, the re-

sponses of 78 of them were removed, which belonged

to generations X and Boom. It is worth noting that the

generation deﬁnitions used here are the Reeves and

Oh (Reeves and Oh, 2008): Boom Generation (1946-

1964); Generation X or Xennial (1965-1980); Gener-

ation Y or Millennial (1981-2000); and Generation Z

or Centennial (2001-current).

For the development of the questionnaire, an

adaptation (and partial updating) of the instrument

used and provided by researchers in the area (Ma-

ciel and Pereira, 2012), was made through modiﬁ-

cation and addition of questions to better represent

the current state of the technologies and their possi-

ble treatments for posthumous data, however without

modifying some pathways of the questions obtained

from Maciel and Pereira (Maciel and Pereira, 2012),

in order to allow comparison between studies. An-

other important contribution comes from the ques-

tionnaire prepared and applied by Grimm and Chias-

son (Grimm and Chiasson, 2014), in order to investi-

gate how participants would like their digital traces to

be treated in the postmortem period and their feelings

about an online service related to death.

Other studies were important to create questions,

such as the work of Viana et al. (Viana et al., 2017a),

which analyzes terms of use and privacy policies,

which assisted in formulating questions about privacy

of proﬁles on social networks and how users would

like to modify it in cases of memorial proﬁles. The

research by Ueda, Verhalen and Maciel (Ueda et al.,

2019), which compare aspects related to death in the

real world with the design of digital memorials, based

on issues related to pre-conﬁguration of posthumous

proﬁles. On immortality issues, the articles by Galv

et al. (Galv

ao et al., 2017) and Sas et al. (Sas et al.,

2019), assisted in the introduction of this theme to the

questionnaire.

The questionnaire has the following organization:

general data, knowledge about information technol-

ogy, religion, social networks, representation of death

and digital immortality. For the purposes of this work,

among 46 questions, only 20 are the object of analy-

sis: only the questions related to general data and so-

cial networks. Regarding the content, the questions

dealt with the use of posthumous data focused on so-

cial networks.

The questions were built on the online platform

Google Forms, an application that can be used for

the administration of searches. The online applica-

tion proved to be the best option due to i) the greater

reach of users; ii) guarantee of anonymity of the par-

ticipants, due to the sensitive theme; iii) the number

of questions of the instrument and iv) automatic tab-

ulation of the data by the tool used. After completing

the questionnaire, a pilot test was conducted with stu-

dents who already had some familiarity with the sub-

ject, in order to receive feedback for the improvement

of the questions and ﬂow of the questionnaire.

The call to voluntary participation of the research

was made by invitations ﬁred to email lists and so-

cial networks. The questionnaire was available from

11/1/2020 until 7/2/2020 and, in total, 250 responses

were collected. The consent form was accepted by

247 participants, who agreed to answer the entire

questionnaire and authorized the use of the data for re-

search. It should be noted that this research is part of

the DAVI

(Dados Al

em da Vida - Data Beyond Life)

project, which has approval from the Ethics Commit-

tee on Research with Human Beings of the Federal

University of Mato Grosso. With the large amount

of data collected during the application of the ques-

tionnaire, descriptive statistics were chosen to help

interpret and present the data collected with the help

of graphs and tables with percentage of relative fre-

quency or absolute frequency.

For the realization of comparisons, the IBM Sta-

tistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) tool

was studied and applied to correlate the data obtained.

The software has an extensive set of tools to perform

advanced statistics, allowing the creation of charts, ta-

bles and decision trees. For the analysis, the questions

were identiﬁed with the letter ”P” (of questions) and

the participants of the research with the letter ”S” (of

http://lavi.ic.ufmt.br/davi/publicacoes/

ICEIS 2021 - 23rd International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

510

subjects), being the letter ”A” representing the par-

ticipants who followed the ﬁrst route, of transform-

ing the proﬁle into a memorial, and the letter ”B” the

second, choosing to delete the proﬁle. All data were

compared considering comparisons between the gen-

erations participating in the research and with other

published research on the theme, especially the one

in which the questionnaire was inspired(Maciel and

Pereira, 2012).

4 RESULTS

In this section, we initially present the general data in

which we bring the main information about the par-

ticipants. Next, we present analyses on Social Net-

works and Posthumous Interaction, making compar-

isons with data collected from other generations and

with other research. In particular, comparisons are

made with the research carried out in 2012 (Maciel

and Pereira, 2012), in which 78 young people from

the Internet Generation participated in a similar study

and whose questionnaire served as the basis for this

study. Finally, we present a cross-reference of the in-

formation in order to allow a better interpretation of

the data, analyzing them based on some research in

similar contexts.

4.1 General Data

The mean age P(x) and the median of the participants

were 33 years, and the fashion was 23 years. As

there is a coincidence of average and median, with

both measures superior to fashion, it can be afﬁrmed

that there is positive asymmetry in the distribution.

Among the participants, 68,4% of them, that is, 169

people ﬁt the Digital Generation, and these data are

used. The standard deviation found for the age vari-

able was 11 years, indicating a large dispersion of

ages in relation to the mean. Regarding gender, 49,7%

identiﬁed themselves as female and 50,3% male.

Among the participants, 98,4% had a computer at

home and have an average internet use per day of 5 to

8 hours with a median of 9 to 12 hours of use. Com-

pared to the study done by Maciel and Pereira (Maciel

and Pereira, 2012) done with the same generation, in

which 73% of the participants marked a use of 1 to 4

hours, the time in which the Digital Generation dedi-

cates itself to the Internet increased signiﬁcantly.

4.2 Social Networks and Posthumous

Interaction

About the use of Social Networks 94,3%, of the par-

ticipants marked that they use, conﬁrming that the

questionnaire was able to reach an audience that uses

this tool. In the aspect, which are the most used

by participants 77,7% of them use both Instagram

and Facebook, 38,6% of them use Twitter, 96,1% use

Whatsapp or Telegram, 24% use Pinterest. 7,3% use

relationship apps (Tinder and Grindr) and 3% of them

Linkedin.

About having some contact in their Social Net-

work that has passed away (P16), 67,7% of the partic-

ipants said yes. When asked in question P17 in what

type of interaction they performed with the proﬁle of

this contact, participants can mark more than one op-

tion in this question:

• 65,6% scheduled to read the messages of other

people left there;

• 60,1% visited the proﬁle to review information of

the deceased, such as photos;

• 49,7% accessed to ﬁnd out the cause of death;

• 10,9% accessed to read the messages left by you

to this person, and;

• 9,3% posted messages for the deceased.

In relation to the answers obtained in the open alterna-

tive, expressions related to mourning and condolences

to the family and even farewell to the family were ob-

served, such as the S159, which answered: ”to discon-

nect me from the proﬁle”. Much of the posthumous

interaction is in the visualization of data already pro-

vided in the proﬁle, such as messages left by the de-

ceased or by third parties, photos and videos, going,

according to the ideas of D

oveling, Harju and Shavit

oveling et al., 2015) in how the proﬁles of deceased

can help us remember loved ones and keep their mem-

ories alive.

The participants were, in P18, asked if they had

any deceased whose proﬁle was removed from a so-

cial network, 55,4% of them stated that they never

observed this event and, the 23,9% who scored yes,

were asked in P19 about what feelings they had when

they noticed this removal, and 32,7% said they felt

”Sadness”; 23,6% ”Comfort”; 9,1% ”Frustration” and

7,3% ”Relief”. Both the most recurrent feelings,

”Sadness” and ”Comfort”, mark the duality that dig-

ital memorials bring in relation to how friends and

family can feel. The feelings related to the death

of someone close are never positive and the reminis-

cence of this person online can bring sadness, how-

ever maintaining a digital memorial for others is a

Digital Generation and Posthumous Interaction: A Descriptive Analysis in Social Networks

511

way to keep the memories of the deceased alive and

assists in the mourning process as expressed by par-

ticipant S90 in the open alternative who stated to feel

”Apprehensive. To know that a part that represented

someone’s life is gone.”

About the removal of proﬁles, 60,1% of the par-

ticipants are aware that a user’s proﬁle can be re-

moved (P20), and in the research conducted by Ma-

ciel and Pereira [(Maciel and Pereira, 2012), 78,2%

of the young people of the Digital Generation did not

know that a user’s proﬁle can be removed after his

death, this demonstrates a growth in the dispersion of

information about the destination of posthumous ac-

counts.

Of the participants, 67,4% of them are in favor of

family members or third parties indicating removal

(P21). Participants were asked to justify their re-

sponse if they wanted to, and many of them agreed

that the family has the right to choose to remove the

proﬁle as demonstrated by the S188 ”Any family de-

cision is valid in view of the pain they feel for the

loss” and S8 ”The family should have the right to

watch over the privacy and memory of the deceased”.

Others expressed similar preferences in exclusion as

the S146 ”I see no need for a proﬁle of a dead per-

son.” and The S112 ”If the person has passed away

it makes no sense to have an account on social me-

dia”. Many also claim that the account should only

be deleted according to the wish of the deceased as

the S34 ”depends on what the person wished in life.

Deleting the proﬁle would delete part of your legacy.”

and S42 ”The previous option has to be made by the

proﬁle owner”. Participant S127 reported that ”family

members did, third parties do not.”

Some participants also reported preferences in

maintaining the proﬁle on social networks such as

S55 ”Obviously the will of the family that suffers

the most from the situation matters, but visiting the

proﬁle of a deceased reconnects us with a legacy left

there, especially the human legacy of friendships and

messages, which reconnects us with the deceased.”;

S93 ”Leaving the social network of a deceased active

is preserving memories and memories.”, S90 ”If the

deceased posted things in life, it is because it was in

his interest to record his publications. Removing the

proﬁle is ripping off someone’s memory, and mostly

going over your decision.” and S144 ”I think it’s im-

portant to keep the memory of the deceased’s life still

available to your contacts.”

When asked about the destination of their data in

social networks (P23) 61,8% of the participants stated

that they had never thought about it and 59,2% of

them did not notice the existence of memorial pro-

ﬁles in some social networks (P25). It is interesting to

mention that, in the research conducted by Yamauchi,

Maciel and Pereira (Yamauchi et al., 2018), when

asked if they knew about what are digital legacy pre-

management systems 29,9% answered yes and 70,8%

did not.

In question P24, the participants chose up to 3

measures that they would like to be applied on their

social networks after death, as can be seen in Table 1.

Table 1: Answers found in question P24.

Question Options %

Your account should be immedi-

ately deleted if there was ofﬁcial

notiﬁcation of death to the social

network. Until the conﬁrmation

was sent, your contacts could nor-

mally access your account.

31%

A user previously selected by you

should receive your account login

and password. However, he would

have to follow the determinations

you would leave in a digital will.

37,9%

An heir previously selected by you

should receive your account, with

the freedom to do whatever you

want with your account and your

details.

15,9%

An heir previously selected by you

should receive the legacy of your

account and would have to follow

the determinations you would leave

in a digital will.

24,1%

Your data should be sent to a Vir-

tual Cemetery or a memorial pro-

ﬁle, containing only some informa-

tion of your choice, such as date of

birth and death.

35,8%

A farewell message written by you

should be displayed on your proﬁle

when you conﬁrm your death.

42,7%

A copy (backup) of your social net-

work account data should be sent to

an heir chosen by you.

30,2%

An interesting fact was that more participants pre-

ferred to give their login and password to a third party

than select an heir previously, even if both have to

respect determinations left. This may indicate that

participants do not have an understanding of what an

heir means in the context of digital memorials. Con-

sidering that the heir has the function of managing

the proﬁle, he has a certain level of access within the

memorialized account, on Facebook, for example, he

can write a ﬁxed post on the proﬁle, update proﬁle

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512

picture and cover, and respond to friend requests. As

opposed to handing over password and login to a third

party, which would have full access to the account and

all its features.

Another notorious indicator is that 42,7% of par-

ticipants chose to leave a farewell message in the pro-

ﬁle, demonstrating that they perceive their proﬁle as

a way to communicate and express themselves, even

when it becomes posthumous it will still serve to de-

liver their last thoughts. This choice is in line with

the social character of death indicated by Massimi et

al. (Massimi et al., 2011), preserving the digital iden-

tity of the deceased. This fact was also noted in the

research of Maciel and Pereira (Maciel and Pereira,

2013), in which the desire to leave a posthumous mes-

sage was one of the options most chosen by the partic-

ipants and, for them ”the desire to leave a posthumous

message shows that death in Social Networks is not a

taboo that should be hidden.”

When asked if they would prefer their proﬁle to

be removed or memorialized, 57,6% chose Transform

to Memorial and 42,4% Proﬁle Removal (P26). The

number of participants who preferred to leave the pro-

ﬁle as a memorial was higher than the removal option,

this can demonstrate that the Digital Generation has

more conﬁdence and more attachment to digital me-

dia and their data stored in them.

In comparison, in the research by Maciel and

Pereira (Maciel and Pereira, 2012), 57,7% of its par-

ticipants chose to remove the proﬁle, 39,7% for non-

removal and 2,6% did not know how to give their

opinion. This fact demonstrates an increase in partic-

ipants who would maintain their proﬁles after death.

Among the participants who preferred ”Transform

into A Memorial”, 75,6% would pre-conﬁgure their

proﬁle with their preferences for their memorial pro-

ﬁle (P26A3). Among them, 69,7% were belonging to

the Digital Generation. Also in their research, 67,9%

reported that they would like to pre-conﬁgure their

memorial proﬁle, this data obtained a slight increase

and continues to indicate the will intention to cus-

tomize the destination of their legacy and conﬁrms

the characteristic of customizing and customizing that

Tapscott (Tapscott, 2010) indicated for the Digital

Generation.

In P26A4, of the participants of the Digital Gener-

ation, 72,3% reported that they are aware and 36,1%

of them have already deﬁned an heir. It is notorious

the largest numbers of participants aware of the possi-

bility of choosing an heir and who have already cho-

sen one when compared to the study by Pereira et al.

(Pereira et al., 2019) that when questioning their par-

ticipants, 80% stated that they had never conﬁgured

speciﬁcations related to the destination of their data

and 20% could not say whether they had done it or

not.

Question P26A7 questions participants about the

permissions the heir may have to manage the digital

memorial. Most participants, about 75,6% of them

would like the heir to be allowed to add the date of

death and 58% to manage tributes. Almost half of

them, 48,9% of the participants, would also like the

heir to be able to insert quotations or epitaph, char-

acterizing the proﬁle as a place of remembrance and

homage, similar with cemetery tombstones, which for

Ueda, Verhalen and Maciel (Ueda et al., 2019), char-

acterizes an incorporation of ofﬂine death aspects into

digital media.

Among the participants who chose to remove their

account after death, 59,8% of them indicated that, in

their opinion, the proﬁle would not serve to support

grief or posthumous tributes and 49% of them also in-

dicated that they would like to maintain their posthu-

mous privacy. About this, the participant S73 says

”Because the social network is a lot of exposure” and

the S217 ”Yes, delete to avoid feelings of extreme

longing ... what the eyes do not see the heart does not

feel.” For Gach (Gach, 2019), the decision to delete

the proﬁle, for the account owner, often seems the

most desired, but removal is something that brings

suffering to loved ones. After removal, all informa-

tion created and maintained in the proﬁle instantly

disappears, and this loss can disrupt practices that

other users have developed during mourning.

About the interaction with posthumous proﬁles,

when asked about what sensations they had, 55,4% of

the participants reported ”Reﬂection on the meaning

of life”, 51,1% ”Longing”, 34,8% ”Sadness”, 25,8%

”Discomfort”, 12% ”Comfort” and 3% ”Stress”.

Thus, it can be said that most participants perceive

the posthumous proﬁle as a way of thinking about the

life of that person and supplying the feeling of long-

ing, as S19 said ”I go in the proﬁle of the deceased to

kill the longing. Always!”

In question P28, participants selected up to 3 op-

tions for detecting death of users on social networks,

the choice with greater acceptance was the option of

selecting friends to notify the death in return for the

option of any user notifying the system. Thus, it can

be said that users are looking for security for the noti-

ﬁcation method, because by denying third parties the

possibility of sending notiﬁcations and ensuring that

only trusted friends can accomplish this task users en-

sure that the notiﬁcation will only occur if the owner

of the proﬁle actually dies.

Digital Generation and Posthumous Interaction: A Descriptive Analysis in Social Networks

513

4.3 Data Crossing

The main objective of performing comparisons is to

discover the existing association between variables

and can also determine the level of dependence be-

tween them. Thus, by knowing the data of one vari-

able, the result of the other can be better predicted.

(Viali, 2010).

Table 2: Crossing between P26A1 and P26A8.

P26A1 Options No Yes

Open the proﬁle to the audience, al-

lowing any user to view the proﬁle

13 26

Make the proﬁle visible only to

contacts already added

7 28

Keep proﬁle privacy settings un-

changed

11 45

First, questions 26A1 were compared ”You would set

up your social network, determining your preferences

about what should be done with your proﬁle after your

death” and 26A8 ”About your proﬁle preview settings

you would like to”, with the intention of conﬁrming

that the participants who chose not to conﬁgure the

memorial really wouldn’t change anything. The re-

sults can be found in Table 2 above. Of the 31 partici-

pants who marked ”No” for the proﬁle setting, 64,5%

of them marked a privacy conﬁguration change op-

tion demonstrating that, even indicating previously

that they would not be interested in changing their set-

tings, when asked with options, they prefer to change

something rather than leave the proﬁle unchanged. It

is important to remember that only participants who

chose the route of memorialized the proﬁle answered

these questions.

Next, we try to ﬁnd out the connection between

how participants felt when they noticed that an ac-

quaintance had their proﬁle deleted from a social net-

work and their choice to memorialize their own pro-

ﬁle or remove it. For this, we cross-referenced the

data of question P19 ”what feeling did you have” with

the question P26 ”Would you prefer that your proﬁle

be removed from the social network after your death

or be transformed into a memorial”, the result of this

crossing can be seen in Table 3.

It is notorious that all participants who reported

negative sensations such as ”Apprehension”, ”De-

spair”, ”Frustration” and ”Stress” chose to turn their

proﬁle into a memorial, this fact can be explained due

to the inﬂuence of negative emotions they had when

encountering the proﬁle of a known removed (P19),

shown in Table 3 and, consequently, chose not to ex-

clude their own proﬁle.

In the participants who marked ”Comfort” and

Table 3: Crossing questions P19 and P26.

P19 Options Proﬁle Removal Turn to Memorial

Relief 2 2

Seizure 0 1

Despair 0 1

Frustration 0 5

Comfort 6 7

Indifference 2 2

I can’t tell 0 1

Sadness 6 12

None 4 3

Stress 0 1

”Relief”, although they reported positive sensations

regarding the proﬁle of an acquaintance having been

removed, 50% of those who chose ”Relief” and 54%

of those who chose ”Comfort” chose to turn their

proﬁle into a memorial. This can happen because

these users have attachment to their own memories

and would like to preserve them on the social net-

work, although they feel better in the face of the re-

moval of the proﬁle of an acquaintance that has passed

away. On the other hand, the participants who marked

”Indifference”, ”None” or could not say, half of them

chose to remove the proﬁle and the other half to turn

it into a memorial, indicating impartiality in relation

to sensations. Additionally, the data obtained in the

P2 ”Gender” question were also compared with the

question P3 ”Do you think it is necessary to plan for

the future?”, with the intention of ﬁnding out how the

participants ﬁt into the question prepare for the future

in relation to gender, the result of this crossing can be

seen in Table 4.

Table 4: Crossing questions P2 and P3.

P3 question options Female Male

It is completely necessary 33 51

As far as possible, it is nec-

essary

100 59

I see no need of doing that 2 0

When we cross-referenced the answers obtained, we

can observe that 46,4% of the participants who de-

clared themselves men also indicated that it is com-

pletely necessary to plan for the future, while in the

participants who declared themselves as female only

25,6% of them marked the same level of concern. In

both, the preference for the option ”As far as possible

is necessary” was noted, this indicates that the ma-

jority of participants, both men and women, have a

certain concern in planning tomorrow, with a higher

incidence on women.

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5 FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

Realizing how the generation that was born in the

middle of technology interacts with posthumous pro-

ﬁles in social networks is important for the devel-

opment and improvement of conﬁgurations that deal

with this sensitive topic. In the literature, there is a

lack of data on such issues. Based on the data of this

study, it can be concluded that Digital Generation al-

ready has contact with proﬁles of users who died, in

this case, about 67,7% of them, and that the little con-

cern it has with the planning of the future reﬂects on

the management of its digital assets, and 58,9% of

them had never thought about the destination of their

data after they died. It is noteworthy that the research

was carried out before the pandemic of the new Coro-

navirus Sars-Cov-2, an episode that has the potential

for the occurrence of death and the perception of users

regarding the proﬁles of deceased.

Even with the existence of digital memorials in

social networks, most users are unaware of the func-

tioning of these tools. Through the questionnaire it

was possible to detect two different opinions: a) de-

sire to remove the proﬁle: users who preferred to re-

move their proﬁle after death found that they do not

see any use in maintaining the proﬁle if they them-

selves are no longer able to manage it; and b) trans-

formation into a memorial: the person shows interest

in keeping the image of the person alive, both for rea-

sons of memory and remembrance, and to preserve

the identity that person built in his proﬁle during years

of use.

Most posthumous interactions performed by par-

ticipants are in reading scraps left by others for the

deceased, to review old information such as photos

and videos and the search for the cause of death. This

information goes against the results of Maciel and

Pereira (Maciel and Pereira, 2012), who also ﬁnd, in

their research, that the most practiced posthumous in-

teraction was to review old information and read mes-

sages left by other people.

In addition, in relation to Maciel and Pereira’s re-

search (Maciel and Pereira, 2012) there was an in-

crease: a) the average internet use, from 1 to 4 to 5

to 8 hours, which was expected due to the increas-

ing advance of the Internet, b) the number of partic-

ipants who claimed that they had already had some

contact in their social network that died, from 62,2%

to 67,7% and c) of users who would like to turn their

proﬁle into memorial , and in the 2012 survey (Maciel

and Pereira, 2012), 39,7 preferred this option and, in

the current survey, about 57,6% opted for her. The

most signiﬁcant difference in data is among partici-

pants who are aware that a user’s proﬁle can be re-

moved, which went from 21,8% (Maciel and Pereira,

2012) to 60,1% in the current survey. From this sense,

it is perceived greater concern of young people with

the future of their data and a certain attachment to dig-

ital information.

It was noted the similarity between the charac-

teristics most chosen by users for their posthumous

proﬁle and the characteristics found in tombstones in

cemeteries identiﬁed in studies such as Ueda, Ver-

halen and Maciel (Ueda et al., 2019), name being:

full name, full date of birth and death, and insertion

of text/epitaph. It can be said that many of those

who chose to keep their proﬁle as a memorial see it

as a place with functions similar to physical memori-

als. Friends and relatives can visit you to remember

loved ones and when they miss you. The inclusion of

photos in the posthumous proﬁle is the predominant

functionality that most differentiates the two forms of

memorial. Still, users seek, in the pre-conﬁgurations

of their posthumous proﬁle, to leave a last message

to friends and family, conﬁrmed by the constant ac-

ceptance of the options regarding the inclusion of

farewell message in the memorial proﬁle. Thus, the

social network is able to perform its function of pro-

viding and facilitating communication between peo-

ple. As this work was focused on interaction in social

networks, due to the large number of issues developed

and, mainly, due to the limitation of time, there are

still several possibilities of interpretation and analysis

of data that can lead to new conclusions.

Moreover, although the data from the other gen-

erations have not been explored in this research, it is

perceived in a preliminary analysis the need to inves-

tigate the theme with the focus focused on generation

X and boom generation, considering that speciﬁcities

perceived in these data may indicate hypotheses for

future research, including comparisons with the data

already studied from the Digital generation. In addi-

tion, the initial difﬁculties with the statistical analysis

prevented a deﬁnition of sampling that allows the gen-

eralization of the results found, so for future studies

it would be necessary to calculate the sample before

the application of the questionnaire, which would im-

prove the validation of the results. Another issue for

future work is related to the cost of storing proﬁles,

since the increase in proﬁles with deceased users is

something inevitable, as this may affect companies is

a valid question to be researched.

Finally, it is important to highlight that conduct-

ing research within the theme of posthumous inter-

action and social networks makes society think about

the subject, and several of the participants commented

that they had never thought about this theme before

answering the questionnaire and after their participa-

Digital Generation and Posthumous Interaction: A Descriptive Analysis in Social Networks

515

tion began to consider their choices for their own data.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to thank the volunteers partic-

ipants and the institutions that offered us partial sup-

port to this publication in Brazil: the Conselho Na-

cional de Desenvolvimento Cient

ıﬁco e Tecnol

ogico

(CNPq); the Pr

o-reitoria de Pesquisa (PROPeq) of the

Federal University of Mato Grosso, and the Uniselva

Foundation.

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