The need for social connection is deeply ingrained in the biology of humans that dictate its inherent drive to be known. Our ancestors left traces of themselves in the stories they passed down and on the markings on cave walls. When our stories are seen and remembered, our short-lived moments continue beyond the present; and when we try to extend ourselves outward, individual lives form a shared memory.
Blurred lines
In the modern era, we have found new ways of leaving our marks through the use of digital platforms. Posts, photos, conversations, and profiles have become the modern-day cave handprints. However, this time, erosion and decay are no longer a problem. Instead, these digital remnants become lasting traces that remain even after the people who left them are gone. As a result, this has changed how some may grieve and remember—blurring the line between presence and absence.
So when we scroll through the social media profiles of those who have passed, we get to revisit these moments and encounter curated fragments of a life once lived. Remembrance is no longer a closed chapter, but an interaction that continues to persist. Through this, our stories do not end with death; they endure through the digital selves we leave behind, influencing how loss is felt and how memory is preserved.
Curated digital autobiographies
Since then, the digital age has shifted the archiving of life—from physical photos and handwritten journals to dynamic and curated profiles. Lives once private and fleeting can now be archived, searched, and revisited indefinitely, creating what some researchers describe as a digital autobiography.
This externalization of autobiographical memory—the process of storing memories digitally—has grown exponentially over the years, fundamentally reshaping how we construct and revisit personal narratives.
Posting personal experiences provides our loved ones with a role in the memory-making process, adding to the layers of social reinforcement, rehearsal, and meaning-making. A study involving college students and young adults supports the notion that posting affects how we remember moments, often making them more vivid. Instead of possibly forgetting moments, what we put on digital platforms becomes digital artifacts that help us recall the emotional contours of every memory.
The internet refuses to forget
In the early days of the internet, social media platforms such as Facebook deleted the accounts of its deceased users. This practice shifted in 2009 when Facebook introduced an earlier version of account memorialization. Instead of deletion, verified deceased profiles were tagged with “Remembering,” which limited the account’s profile to its Facebook friends, while preserving the user’s digital presence. Instagram later adopted a similar feature in 2020.
In 2015, Facebook also introduced the “On This Day” feature, now known as Memories, where posts, photos, and videos from the same date in previous years resurface on the user’s feed.
This preservation of the past isn’t just a byproduct of algorithms; it is an active, communal refusal to forget, with users transforming abstract media into shared memorials. For instance, the song “Drag Path” by Twenty One Pilots resurfaced in a TikTok trend. The song is complex, metaphorical, and is interpreted in different ways, but it illustrates the journey of finding traces left behind by someone, analogous to the evidence left behind by those who passed that we uncover.
These features and trends mark a fundamental change in how grief is experienced and felt in online spaces. The internet eternally keeps watch over moments that time might otherwise erase. Instead of fading with time, digital profiles and platforms help immortalize and resurface unprompted gentle reminders of what once was.
Handprints left behind on digital screens
Within the space of grief, digital traces complicate absence, as they make it so that the dead are never entirely gone. In the traditional sense of grief, loss is marked by absence: no longer hearing a familiar voice, seeing a familiar face, or feeling their physical presence.
When social media platforms suddenly resurface “memories” or notification activity from deceased accounts, loved ones still feel a distinct pang. Even now, people continue to comment on old posts, attempting to piece together the circumstances of death and turning private loss into public inquiry.
Unlike physical spaces, which can be consciously avoided—the street once walked together, the seats at a shared canteen table, or the shops entered only in their company—digital spaces offer little room for such choices. Unless manually toggling off certain settings and muting specific words and accounts, algorithms decide when the past reappears, collapsing time and forcing encounters with loss at unpredictable moments. In this way, grief becomes mediated by systems that do not account for emotional readiness, transforming remembrance into an automated process rather than a personal one.
Yet, within this structure, a fraction of the internet has become a mausoleum that houses dead profiles, abandoned conversations, and frozen memories. Each time we come across a passed friend’s old post, or when a certain song or silly anecdote reminds us of them, we find traces they left behind, etching their lives ever deeper into our memory.
This article was published in The LaSallian‘s January 2026 issue. To read more, visit bit.ly/TLSJan2026.
