#AfterIDie

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Have you ever thought about what happens to your social media accounts after you die?

If you watched this year's installation of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror back in February, you might have seen the episode "Be Right Back" featuring a pretty futuristic account of how technology could keep our loved ones alive after death. It follows a bereaved young widow in the days after the untimely death of her husband, who is offered a digital device that acts and talks just like her husband did, based on his Facebook posts and Tweets. She starts slowly by having online conversations with her "husband", as the programme creates algorithms to reply in the same way as he would have when alive by scanning through all of his previous online posts and imitating his personality. She becomes so addicted to this contact with her late husband that she eventually goes a step further and orders a real life, walking talking replica of him to relieve her grief.

Most of Charlie Brooker's fantastical ideas are close enough to the bone to make us think differently about modern society, yet far enough removed to remain impossible... but it seems like this isn't as distant as you might think.

Apps like DeadSocial and LivesOn have been built to ensure your digital legacy lives on after your passing. With scary similarity to that episode of Black Mirror, LivesOn actually does scan all of your previous Tweets and continues to Tweet in your "style" after you die.  It analyses your tastes, things you like and even your syntax. You can test it whilst you're alive, guiding it to provide more accurate Tweets, then appoint an Executor of your account who can notify LivesOn you've died and start the post-death Tweeting. DeadSocial works slightly differently in that you control the content that is posted after you die, as you create a series of messages to be sent out posthumously to friends and relatives.

There is debate from psychologists about the effect this might have on the bereavement process. Would you embrace this if you lost a loved one as a way to keep their memory alive? Would this help your grief by making the transition easier and less abrupt, or do you think it could be damaging to the grieving process and the adjustment to life without the person who has died?

Without these services, what happens to our social media services when we die is a bit of a grey area. Giving your passwords to relatives violates most websites' terms and conditions, and some advise against putting passwords in your Will because they can become public property and could be accessed by anybody. Currently Facebook has an option to memorialise accounts of the deceased so that it can be a place of remembrance and people can still continue to post messages on their wall, like a digital grave. However, the process can be lengthy and requires proof of identity that family members may not want to have to deal with at an already distressing time.

What do you want to happen to your social media accounts when you die? Do you agree with apps posting on your behalf? Whatever you decide, it's good to have a think about how you'd like your online accounts to be managed after you die - and there's no time like the present.