Should You Stay Linked to Departed Friends on Facebook?

Those of us who have accounts on social networking sites like Facebook often have hundreds of friends, some of whom we have become good friends with, but what is the correct thing to do in the event that a good friend passes away?

This article was prompted by the passing at the weekend of someone who my wife and I had got to know quite well over the last two years, and this is now the second person that I have linked to online that has passed away this year.

Facebook has a policy of keeping alive the profiles of those members who have passed on as a memorial to them, but what ought your personal policy to be.

Is it correct to un-friend someone on Facebook who has passed away?

You might want to remove the friendship link to someone on Facebook who has passed away, but does that make you feel somewhat guilty about doing that?

This was a friend of yours, albeit an online friend that you most likely had never met in person, however it was a friend nevertheless. By removing them on Facebook, it's as if you are dropping that friendship and forgetting them.

Is it better to retain a friend link on Facebook for someone who has passed away?

On the other side of the argument however, by keeping that person as a friend on Facebook, you keep coming across them when you perform certain activities, such as sharing links, or recommending networked blogs to your friends.

I would feel bad I am sure if I recommended a blog to someone and then realized after submitting it that I had selected a deceased friend. What if someone looks at their account and sees all the activity from me? It could be embarrassing don't you think?

Then there is the case of the Facebook games, like Farmville for example. If this friend was a neighbor of yours on Farmville, the game will keep popping up their name as a person whose crops you can fertilize etc. It just takes one slip and all your other friends will see that you have helped them out. But does this look good for you, or bad, or are your other friends just likely to ignore it as a slip of the mouse?

In my mind it's a tough question, and with a deceased person's Facebook page often being left as a memorial to them, is it right to retain them as a friend, or for people to look back and say that they didn't have many online friends, because half of them unlinked.

One thing is certain though, if it hasn't happened to you yet, and you have hundreds or even thousands of friends on Facebook, sooner or later one or more of them is going to pass away, and the question will arise, do you keep them in your friend's list?

Over time we can all expect multiple friends to pass on, and if 10% or more of your Facebook friends is no longer living, how are you going to deal with this.

Do you have any thoughts on this topic? If so, please leave a comment and let others know what you think.

No, I don't just write about morbid things. Click HERE to see what other topics I write about. You might be surprised.

Sources:

Authors Opinion