It’s been a while since I checked my Facebook. I have four hundred missed notifications. Most of them are junk, groups I joined a long time ago and now regret. On the home page there are suggestions: you should friend this girl, talk to that guy, you haven’t visited her page in a long time, why don’t you send so-and-so a message? There is a simple reason I don’t send so-and-so a message — so-and-so is dead.

It has been almost a year now that a close friend of my father died. The news of his death first appeared on his Facebook page, posted by his girlfriend. In the days and months after his death many messages appeared on his page, about his death, about how much people missed him, about any news, but then it slowly died down. Every now and then his name will appear on my page, asking me to visit his page or to send him a message. This made me wonder, how common is this?

This subject seems to be concerning more than just me. In a New York Times article “What Happens to Your Facebook After You Die?” by Dan Fletcher, they speak of a woman who in a twitter post speaks of her deceased friend showing up in her suggestions. This appears to have become such an issue that Facebook is starting memorial pages.

In a post on the Facebook blog Max Kelly, Facebook’s head of security, speaks of his own friend that died, making him confront this. “When someone leaves us, they don’t leave our memories or our social network. To reflect that reality, we created the idea of ‘memorialized’ profiles as a place where people can save and share their memories of those who’ve passed.” he wrote.

These memorialized profiles won’t let people log in anymore. They also take the names out of the suggestions bar, which is often painful for the people who see their deceased friends that way. “Memorializing an account also prevents anyone from logging into it in the future, while still enabling friends and family to leave posts on the profile Wall in remembrance.” writes Kelly.

Community High School student Maddie Bell says to the subject: “I think its horrible when someone dies and no one takes down their screen names. It’s like they’re a living ghost in the internet.” Mira Cooper, a student at AHS, says: “If facebook is asked by the family or by close friends to shut down the page, they should do it.” “Personally, I like the idea of memorial pages. It’s a thoughtful way of acknowledging a death” says Sam Gillies.

Though overall many people support the idea of memorializing pages, it doesn’t seem like much is happening. Even though Facebook pages can now be memorialized by relatives or close friends providing proof of the users death, not many have done this. As painful as it can be to read “you haven’t spoken to this person in a while”, the fact that the wall is up is rather comforting.