In 2010, after Hallie Twomey lost her 20-year-old son, CJ, to suicide, she found herself looking at the frozen shell of his Facebook page. His profile photo still smiled back at her, and his posts were preserved—birthday wishes, sports rants, and old jokes shared with friends. It felt like a place where she could still access him.
“I was unable to stop returning,” she expressed to NPR in an interview. “It was one of the sole methods I had of feeling near to him.”
Yet, what began as a straightforward source of emotional support has morphed into something much trickier. Notifications would pop up. Memories would pop up at the most unexpected times. And then there were the not-so-comforting suggestions by the platform itself. “It was like the algorithm didn’t know he was gone,” she mentioned.
Thus, Hallie chose to enact a form of memorial that would be seen worldwide. The Facebook page she set up, titled “Scattering CJ”, asked friends and strangers alike to help send the part of CJ that was in an urn to all the places he had wanted to visit. People didn’t need to go too far; the National Harbor in Maryland, where Hallie lives, became one of the many places that CJ’s ashes would see. Hallie invited participants to film the moment and, if possible, to describe how they, too, had become a part of CJ’s journey. “Scattering CJ” has since been turned into a full-length documentary, capturing the emotional depth of this collective memorial.
Her story isn’t unique.
In today’s world, we leave behind more than memories. We leave behind data — status updates, voice memos, playlists, private messages, and photo albums. Our digital lives are sprawling archives of who we are, or at least how we want to be remembered. But what happens to all that after we’re gone?
This growing question — what some call a “digital legacy” — is quietly reshaping how we think about death and memory.
Platforms are starting to catch on. Facebook now lets users appoint a “legacy contact,” someone who can manage the account after death. Google offers a tool called “Inactive Account Manager,” which lets you decide what happens to your data if your account goes untouched for a certain period of time. Instagram, however, only offers a memorialization option, where the account is frozen in time. No one can post, no one can delete.
It’s not just about access; some individuals are opting to carefully select what their digital legacy looks like while they are still alive. New tools, such as HereAfter AI or Replika, let users record interactions and recollections that can then be morphed into life-like avatars post-mortem. This feels somewhat reminiscent of the tech employed in the creation of holographic models of the deceased. And, as with holograms, the 3D models aren’t really the person; they’re just representations of the person’s consciousness.
“I consider it kind of beautiful,” comments a student at USC who tried out one of the tools. “I would like to leave behind a version of me — even if it’s only digital echoes — for future generations to discover.”
Some folks desire a spotless starting point. Lila, who is 21, laughed as she made a request that, in all likelihood, very few would be brave enough to make: “Please delete everything. If anyone sees my middle school tweets, I’ll be rolling in my grave.”
Our online existence is a patchwork of our greatest moments, our most foolish pronouncements, and our stream-of-consciousness revelations. Those pixelated and wordified memories inhabit a space we call “the cloud.” But they’re just hovering, waiting for someone, anyone, to acknowledge their existence.