Digitally Curious

CHAPTER 16CREATING YOUR DIGITAL LEGACY

Leading cyberpsychologist and counselling psychologist Dr Elaine Kasket¹ is an expert on how digital choices shape our humanity and relationships. She tells stories about the impact of the digital age on how we live and die, and is the author of a fascinating book All the Ghosts in the Machine: The Digital Afterlife of Your Personal Data.²

Elaine specialises in preserving your digital legacy. Or, to put it another way, what happens to our data when we die. This may seem like a morbid subject to address. Still, after interviewing Elaine for The Digitally Curious Podcast³ and reading her book, she provided some actionable advice you can put in place today. Until we connected, I hadn’t considered what happens to our digital self when we die and, more importantly, how you can start planning for your digital legacy.

Facebook has allowed you to “memorialise” an account for some years now, but most people I speak with are completely unaware that this function exists. I’ve had the experience of a former colleague in Australia passing away, and no one is looking after his account. Each year, people are wishing him a happy birthday, blissfully unaware that he has passed away.

Elaine explained that as a psychologist, she was fascinated to see the kinds of behaviours that were occurring on her Facebook groups where people were memorialising people who had passed away. As our relationships with big technology companies have changed, we’re conditioned ...