India to account for large number of ‘Facebook-dead’, says Oxford study

Indians will account for a large number of those who pass away but whose digital remains on Facebook will continue in perpetuity, raising questions of ethics and archive history, a new study at the University of Oxford says.

The analysis by academics from the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) predicts the dead may outnumber the living on Facebook within 50 years, a trend that will have grave implications for how digital heritage is treated in the future.

The analysis predicts that based on 2018 user levels, at least 1.4 billion members will die before 2100. In this scenario, the dead could outnumber the living by 2070.