Facebook is on track to have more dead users than living ones by the year 2070, according to a study by the Oxford Internet Institute in the UK.
Based on user numbers from 2018 and UN figures on population development worldwide, researchers calculated that at least 1.4 billion Facebook members will die by the year 2100.
If the Facebook community continues to grow as it has, the number of dead users by the end of the century would be 4.9 billion, around twice the amount of the current 2.37 billion active (and living) users that Facebook claims.
The growing number of dead Facebook members raises important questions about the virtual heritage of users, the researchers say.
“On a societal level, we have just begun asking these questions and we have a long way to go,” co-author Carl Ohman said. His colleague David Watson also stressed the potential use of Facebook data as a historical archive of human culture.
It is important that access to this historical data is not only available to one profit-oriented company. “It is also important to make sure that future generations can use our digital heritage to understand their history,” Watson continued. – dpa
