The Grief Grapevine: Facebook Memorial Pages and Adolescent Bereavement

Grief, Mourning and Bereavement — An Adolescent Perspective

Throughout the 20th century the focus in western culture was on letting go and accepting death. Therefore, mourning practices and death rites began to decline. Death was hidden from society. It was certainly not something that was openly discussed with children or adolescents (Ellis-Gray, 2010). More recently, however, death seems to be more openly conversed. This is most evident in the public space of social networking (Church, 2013).

It is important to clarify terminology that will be used in this article, as various literature tend to use terms such as ‘grief’, ‘bereavement’ and ‘mourning’ interchangeably. Small (2001) surmises grief as the ‘pain and suffering experienced after a loss’ (p. 20). This tends to be an individualised experience. ‘Mourning’ refers to the ‘period of time during which signs of grief are made visible’ (Small, 2001, p. 20). Bereavement is more about the process one goes through as a result of the loss of the relationship.

Adolescence is the time between puberty and adulthood. It is a time in which physical, psychological and social changes take place. Generally 13 to 19 years is the time of adolescence and also a time that a child generally attends a high school (Marcell, 2007). While there is substantial research into the ways in which adolescents grieve and mourn the loss of a peer, the context of social media in these processes has had limited attention. The literature discussing the impact of how high schools in Australia could utilise this knowledge in social media, critical incident and bereavement policies is practically non-existent.

Adolescents can often take in mixed messages about the purpose of grief and mourning. They may believe they need to keep the memory of the deceased alive, and then conversely, find acceptance for their death (Ellis-Gray, 2010). This may be the first time they experience the death of a close loved one, particularly a peer. The internet has given adolescents increased access to information, and this may also facilitate access to how other people react to grief though blogs, websites and social networking comments and responses. Developmentally, adolescence is a time when peer influence is at its peak. The need to belong also drives contagion-type behavior, especially in domains where adult role models are not taking a dominant position (Gifford-Smith, Dodge, Dishion, & McCord, 2005).

Facebook as a Platform — Why is it so Appealing to a Grieving Adolescent?

In May 2013, Facebook reported it had approximately 1.1 billion users worldwide, while the number of Australians using Facebook was 12.2 million. It has been difficult for analysts to calculate the number of deaths of Facebook users each year. It is estimated that since Facebook began, approximately 30 million user profiles have outlived them and have become memorialised (Kaleem, 2013).

In 2013, our current adolescent cohort in Australia have never known life without the internet and other digital technologies. Facebook is currently the most popular social networking site in the world with more than 12 million teenagers worldwide, of which close to 1.8 million are in Australia (Kidman, 2012).

Memorialisation of a Facebook account aims to protect the privacy of the deceased. Once a profile is memorialised no new friends can be accepted and the deceased will not appear in anyone else's ‘People You May Know’ or other suggestions. Facebook will not allow you to create a profile timeline of a deceased person, but suggest that you create a ‘page’ or a ‘group’ instead.

Memorial pages are open to the public. To receive new feed updates from the page users click ‘Like’ at the top of the page. The creator of the page is usually nominated as the administrator of the activity on the page. Memorial ‘groups’ have more privacy control than ‘pages’, and group members must request to join and be approved by the administrator of the group. Group members can participate in chats, upload photos to shared albums, and invite members who are friends to group events (Facebook, 2013). This ‘digital immortality’ means that one's digital imprint may stay in cyberspace for an indefinite period of time (Walter, Hourizi, Moncur, & Pitsillides, 2011, p. 9).

Facebook provides a very unique discourse for adolescents who are grieving the loss of a peer. They become part of a network or community of grievers. This connection to other mourners and the facilitation of relationships between mourners provides the perfect platform for adolescents (Church, 2013; Levitt, 2012). The ‘Circle of Courage Philosophy’ is a model of youth empowerment supported by contemporary research, and highlights four principles of positive youth development: Belonging, Mastery, Independence, and Generosity (Espiner & Guild, 2011; Brendtro, Brokenleg, & Van Bockern, 1990). When investigating grief, mourning and bereavement processes in the context of Facebook memorials, it becomes evident that those four principles are represented.

Independence is fostered because the involvement in Facebook memorials is completely at the creators’ and users’ discretion and is available at all times (Roberts, 2013). Adolescents cannot always go and visit a gravesite or physical memorial, or they may move to another area to complete tertiary studies, or travel overseas when they have completed school studies. Facebook memorials are valuable in this situation to facilitate connection from anywhere and at any time.

Additionally, it is not face-to-face contact, which may be appealing to adolescents who are not ready to verbally express (DeGroot, 2012). Belonging and mastery is built through public recognition that they are affected by the death. However, the process is not rigid or externally controlled. Participants can be observers or contributors to discussions, posts and photos at their own discretion, in their own time. This also allows for the changing emotional responses or ‘stages of grief’ that exist throughout bereavement (Kubler-Ross & Kessler, 2005). It is further fostered by the ability to receive updates regularly without the need to initiate contact directly to others (Levitt, 2012).

Marwick and Ellison (2012) attribute the appeal of social networks such as Facebook to the features of ‘persistence, replicability, scalability and searchability’ (p. 2). The digital space of the deceased person's profile page remains the same in aesthetic appearance after death as it did while they were living (Church, 2013; Marwick & Ellison, 2012). This tends to keep the focus on the person who has died, rather than the mourners. It also tends to create an unusual dynamic of mourners communicating directly to the deceased instead of one another. Because this is visible to the other friends of the deceased, it could add to the sense of belonging.

Conventions in Online Grief

Traditional mourning is governed by conventions, either religious or cultural. De Groot (2012) discusses the lack of established principles in online memorials such as Facebook. Church (2013) comments that these tend to follow the conventions of a traditional eulogy and cites Jamieson and Campbell (1982, p. 147) in stating that the aim is to ‘acknowledge the death, transform the relationship between the living and the dead from present to past tense’, so that the ‘deceased will live on in their hearts and minds’. Church (2013) also found that references to the deceased on Facebook memorials tend to change from present to past and then back to present tense.

Adolescents tend to follow role models in observing social conventions (Friedman, 2007). An important question for adolescent educators to consider is who is setting the rules in relation to expressing condolences on Facebook.

The research indicates that the three main types of posts made on Facebook memorials are from people who:

knew the deceased, speaking directly to that person;

A fourth type of post that is not often mentioned in the literature is when people post to their personal timeline about a deceased loved one using direct speech. Often this may be on an anniversary or other special occasion.

I truly don't know what to say anymore. You're forever the best dad in the world. So undeserving what happened to you and living life without you is the biggest struggle; but I stay strong like you always were. So blessed to ALWAYS be your daughter and I wouldn't have it any another way. You're the greatest dad! Heart of gold and noone compares. I love love love you. Distance doesn't stop my love for you, just strengthens it. Miss you so much: Happy Father's Day baba mou xxxxxxxxxxx.

What is interesting about this occurrence is that it is often directed to people who would probably never have had a Facebook account when they were alive. This is chiefly prevalent with the loss of a family pet.

RIP my dear little sooty we will miss you so much xx.

Mourning the loss of someone you have never met may seem perplexing to some. However, is important to consider that adolescents may see this as common practice. A powerful example is the mourning of celebrity. Over 100 different groups are listed when ‘R.I.P. Michael Jackson’ is searched on Facebook. The largest of these has 332,178 followers. Noppe and Noppe (2004) suggest that the first experience with grief during adolescence may be the loss of a celebrity idol. Another argument is that people are possibly trying to deal with unresolved grief (Walter et al., 2011). DeGroot (2009) uses the term ‘emotional rubberneckers’ to describe people who write to the deceased and group members, even though they had never met the person who died. The reasons for doing this seem to be to identify with the death, to draw attention to it, or genuinely give support.

Another motive for creating a memorial page for a deceased person on Facebook is to raise awareness of a particular illness or social paradigm. Amanda Todd was a 16-year-old Canadian student who committed suicide following a series of cyber-bullying incidents directed at her. The mission of her Facebook memorial page is to ‘Spread awareness of the affects of bullying’. The page has over 652,486 followers (https://www.facebook.com/RestAmandaTodd). The page also remarks: ‘This is an open page. We are trying to keep up with deleting negative comments and banning trollers, please be patient. Thank you.’

This highlights some of the perils of online memorials. While anonymous comments are not allowed on Facebook, ‘trolls’ and ‘grief tourists’ are regularly discussed in the current literature about online memorials on Facebook (Crowe & Watts, 2013; De Groot, 2012; Marwick & Ellison, 2012; Phillips, 2011; Walter et al., 2011). ‘Trolls’ are a label given to people who create a false profile then post inflammatory comments on memorial pages. ‘R.I.P. trolling’ (Phillips, 2011) aims to upset and provoke those who are grieving. Trolls look for newsworthy tragedies with a lot of followers to maximise their audience and subsequent reactions. The difference between an emotional rubbernecker or grief tourist and a troll is that the former is more likely to leave a positive message rather than a destructive one. An analogy would be that a grief tourist is like someone walking around a graveyard reading tombstones and wondering about the fate of the deceased while a R.I.P. troll is more like a person who physically desecrates of a gravesite.

Another negative aspect is that open memorial pages allow for misunderstandings and conflicting ideas about the purpose of the page. Marwick and Ellison (2012) highlight this by using the example of the posting of religious comments to non-religious people.

Challenges for Schools — Policies for Social Networking

It is a challenge for all educators to help students contemplate and anticipate the consequences for the actions they take online. Each Australian state and territory is responsible for governing and developing policies and procedures in schools to ensure ‘cybersafety’. Cybersafety not only aims to ensure the safety of students online, but also to teach appropriate behaviours and conventions. High schools throughout Australia often adopt a ‘computer use policy’ and a ‘mobile phone policy’ to ensure correct use of these technologies in the school framework (Australian Communications and Media Authority, 2013).

Melbourne Girls Grammar was the first Australian school to formally adopt a ‘social media policy’ in 2011 (Casey, 2011). Cybersafety seems to be the main impetus to policies for social media. De Zwart, Henderson, Lindsay, and Phillips (2011) were the driving force behind many Australian schools following the lead of Melbourne Girls Grammar in developing policies around social media. Their research led to key recommendations surrounding legal and ethical issues involved with the posting of photographs, which included privacy, confidentiality, defamation and copyright. It was also endorsed that education about the use of social media should be an integral part of cybersafety curriculum and that educators needed ‘further guidance about the use of SNS (Social Networking Sites), especially in the pedagogical context’ (De Zwart et al., 2011, p. 4). Unfortunately, no mention is made about how we teach students about appropriate conventions for creating, joining or commenting on a Facebook memorial page. Schools may also have to consider the implications of social network usage of students in the case of a critical incident, such as the sudden death of someone in the school community.

The viral nature of the way adolescents communicate information poses some interesting problems for schools. The immediate spread of news lessens the control that educational establishments have to contain, manage and respond to information. Even media outlets are accessing social media to gauge the response of those grieving and to obtain the most recent updates of information (Garde-Hansen, 2010). This may necessitate that schools develop and monitor a social media plan for critical incidents such as the sudden death of a student.

The National Emergency Response Team (NEAT) in the United States suggests that schools set up a memorial page on Facebook to address such events, especially if it is a sudden death or perhaps multiple fatalities. In this way, facts and updates can be posted and posting can be monitored. It can also offer links to services and valuable knowledge and support to the grieving students and their families (Pfohl, 2012).

At the same time as students use social networking to share and gather knowledge, so too can educators and researchers. Facebook memorials can provide a unique environment to observe grief as it provides more natural responses than a lab or interview process can provide (Brubaker, Kivran-Swaine, Taber, & Hayes, 2011).

It may be true that people may only post positive messages that do not truly indicate how they are faring emotionally. However, this can provide an important stimulus to counselling sessions or interview processes, and this type of follow-up could provide more details about why particular comments were posted and how this affected their grief (DeGroot, 2012).

Discussion

The question that researchers will continue to explore is: Does expressing condolences, posting messages to the deceased and being part of a gathering place for mourners on Facebook memorial help or hinder the grief, mourning and bereavement processes of an adolescent? Researchers have used several models to assess this.

DeGroot (2012) used open coding, focused coding and axial coding. Coding schemes were also implemented by Brubaker et al. (2011), who identified comments that exhibited emotional distress. This type of information would be particularly pertinent to school support staff in order to identify students who need additional help and support.

Research also needs to examine whether gender influences online behaviours in the grief, mourning and bereavement processes (Walter et al., 2011). The internet offers a wide range of qualitative research possibilities from attitude surveys, case studies, and examination of social networking responses.

Kasket (2012) discusses the ability of social networking sites such as Facebook to facilitate the ‘continuing bond with the deceased individual’ (p. 68). The continuing bonds theory, as first outlined by Klass & Walter (2001), has four processes: ‘sensing the presence of the dead, talking to the dead, experiencing the dead as guides, and talking about the dead’ (Kasket, 2012, p. 68). From the viewpoint of a grief counsellor or educational institution that is trying to provide effective bereavement support, an understanding of this theory in relation to social networking could be vital.

While current literature provides support for the psychological benefits of social networking memorials, there are still many questions that are left unanswered.

More recent research by Roberts (2012) concludes that it provides a place to accept death, release emotions, and construct the deceased into a personal narrative. Public displays of mourning are sometime equated with the meaningfulness of that person's life. Other positive features of Facebook memorials are that they reduce the number of phone calls and text messages to the immediate family of the deceased, while still letting them know that people are thinking of them (Marwick & Ellison, 2012).

Vicary and Fraley (2010) studied Facebook memorial sites following the Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University shooting tragedies. They found that 90% of students joined a Facebook group memorialising the tragedy. They concluded that most students found Facebook a valuable resource of social support following the tragedy.

The internet was not only a way to talk about the event, but was a way to see and feel the support from people all around the country — I am grateful for Facebook and the internet in general to be the medium through which I received the most moral support.

Sofka and Gilbert (2010) discuss not only the benefits of expression through writing to those who are grieving, but also to those reading the messages. Clearly, in such an open forum such as Facebook, this sense of community and sharing of grief between friends and even strangers can only be beneficial. Facebook memorials may be similar to support groups in this respect. Pfhol (2012) supports this in the statement: ‘Helping re-establish naturally occurring social networks and psychological equilibrium is seen as the best remedy for most of those with trauma’ (p. 36). Relational continuity is about using conversation to sustain the reality of the relationship. There is a sense of bonding and a sense that the relationship still exists, even if it is different (Degroot, 2012).

On the other hand, questions remain as to whether it could change or diminish the existing mourning processes of cultural or religious groups (Lopez, 2011). How do schools become adaptive to the ever-changing platform? If we are to educate students about online etiquette on Facebook memorials, who is the decision-maker for those conventions? Is it driven by values-based conventions? Grief is such an individual journey that it is often difficult to dictate what is right and wrong for each person. However, when we converge into a collective it is important to maintain a level of respect that each member feels comfortable with.

Grief and bereavement scholars have not yet fully examined the types of conversations and communications that are evolving on Facebook memorials (De Groot, 2012). Until this happens it will be difficult to develop guidelines for the appropriate use of memorial pages.

It is important to acknowledge that not all adolescents who participate on Facebook will communicate on Facebook memorials. This review of literature in no way assumes that all adolescents on social media are automatically adopting this approach to grief. Future research could also focus on exploring the proportion of adolescent Facebook users who have been part of a Facebook memorial and investigate why they chose this platform for mourning.

Social networking sites such as Facebook add a new aspect to school crisis responses and need to be both understood and managed effectively to enable the best possible outcomes for students. Further research in this area may help to create pathways for a conversation about death and bereavement in schools, something that is not a dominant aspect of the contemporary pedagogy. Educators and counsellors can use this as a starting point for discussion with students about grief and loss and the ways to navigate their way through bereavement of a lost peer at a critical and defining stage of their social and emotional development.