Ghosts in the Machine

Social Media Has Changed the Way We Mourn

In an essay they contributed to the ‘‘Handbook of Death and Dying,’’ the sociologists Wood and Williamson observe that people in the developed world have managed to banish death from their everyday lives — no small feat. ‘‘In the United States and Western Europe, dying is now primarily a private and often technical affair, hidden behind the closed doors of the hospital, the mortuary and the funeral home,’’ they write.

Proof enough of the change in our culture is that Facebook and other social-­media platforms have introduced procedures for handling profiles after their owners die. Families may decide whether to preserve a loved one’s old accounts; if they do, the accounts become memorials, designated places to lay a digital bouquet.