Online memorial pages for the deceased are becoming as popular in the UK as they have been in the US especially since the rash of murders which have occurred in England recently. An interesting development that is occuring as a result of these pages has been termed “death-networking.”
The sites are not only used as shrines, but have increasingly become a forum for “death networking”–a medium for users to discuss everything from gang culture, to suicide, to stillbirth. [For] a generation which spends so much of its time of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, it is quite natural to mourn and honor dead friends online. [According to the founder of one of the largest UK sites,] “young people find it easier to express themselves this way. If they had to visit graveyards or go to funerals they wouldn’t know what to say, but on the Internet they are more confident and comfortable with saying how they feel.”
This makes very good sense especially for teens and examples were given in the article of other topics being discussed that are tangental to the person’s life and death such as gang mentality, etc. Ideally this forum would be a supplemental outlet to discussions conducted face-to-face with parents.
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Just an observation, but of the course the mandatory environmental reference had to be worked into the article:
Candy [a founder of a site memorializing her teenage daughter] goes as far as to predict online shrines may soon consign cemeteries and graveyards to the past. “Online memorials are good for the environment,” she says. “We are running out of space in this country for graves, and cemeteries–well yes, there are some nice ones, but generally speaking you wouldn’t want to live next door to one.
So (sorry-I just can’t resist asking), ”will these virtual memorials qualify for carbon offsets?”