Facebook users should have more dead than alive in 2098 – Terra Brazil

Forecast American researcher assumes that the growth of social network will stagnate and that all profiles will be transformed into memorials.

By the end of this century, Facebook will become a digital cemetery provides a researcher from the United States. In 2098, the social network, now more than 1.5 billion users will have more profiles of people dead than alive, he said.

The forecast is Hachem Sadikki, doctoral student in statistics at the University of Massachusetts, consulted by the online platform Fusion. It was based on demographic data and on Facebook. The statistical model also assumes that soon, the growth of the social network will stagnate.

Today, more than 60% of Facebook users are under 35, and less than 5% are over 65. If the global network growth really stagnate, or if it losing appeal among young people, the death toll profile on the platform can overcome the living even before the end of the century. According to the Digital Beyond blog, 972,000 Facebook users in the US will die this year alone.

When fans of the network die, their profiles can be transformed into a memorial for his family and friends, allowing them to share memories of the deceased in the timeline. “The transformation of an account in memorial also helps protect her, preventing people from connecting to it,” says the central Facebook Help in Portuguese.

When the social network becomes aware that someone died, part of the company’s policy to transform their account in memorial. However, if Facebook is not knowing the death of a user, your profile remains active. Alerts on the anniversary, for example, continue to appear in the notifications of your contacts.

Facebook says it can not provide anyone’s account login information, even in the event of death, because it “violates the policies” of the platform. Therefore, only if someone has the password of those who died will be possible to permanently delete your profile on the social network.

In his statistical model, Sadikki started from the assumption that all who die have their transformed into memorial accounts, or none will be deleted.

When asked by the Fusion platform, Facebook did not provide their own projections about when the death toll users will surpass the living or information about how many users have died so far.