In 2070, Facebook will have more dead users than alive

The health of Facebook is very good despite the scandals and criticisms surrounding this social network. The number of users now exceeds 2.3 billion.

It is not surprising that the CEO of the company speaks of challenges and avoids mentioning the scandals. "Despite significant challenges, our community and businesses have had a good start to the year. (…) We must continue to create tools to help people connect and strengthen our communities, "said Mark Zuckerberg some time ago.

Even in times of storm, the Californian company (which also has successful products such as Instagram and WhatsApp) has a clear horizon. However, a new study reveals an alarming fact for this social network: in 50 years, Facebook would have more dead users than alive.

A network in the afterlife

The study carried out by researchers from Oxford University, published in Big Data & Society, examined the number of Facebook users and crossed these data with the ratios of mortality of the world population available in United Nations (UN) reports.

The conclusion: in 2070, Facebook will become a virtual cemetery. As we will see later, these predictions contain an important reservation.

According to the report, 500 million monthly active users of the social network will be dead by 2060. By 2079, they will be one billion. Y By the end of the century, 98% of Internet users who use Facebook at least once a month in 2019 will no longer be in this world.

It must be said that academics used the data provided by Facebook at the end of 2018, focusing on the number of monthly active users, which was barely above 1.4 billion.

The warning: growth

The above forecasts reviewed do not think that Facebook's user base will continue to grow. And he should do it despite the crisis he's going through now that he's 15 years old.

When researchers at Oxford University apply an annual growth of 13%, they indicate that the number of deceased users will exceed the number of users alive shortly after 2100.

As we discussed here, it is estimated that Currently, more than 30 million Facebook accounts belong to the deceased. Many of them are run by family or friends and are used as a tribute to the virtual world and as a space to remember that person.

Social networks are aware of this reality: many profiles belong to users who can no longer use the platform! In fact, Sheryl Sandberg, director of operations at the California company, recently said that will apply an artificial intelligence system to automatically recognize profiles belonging to the deceasedand do not send alerts so that we can meet them on their birthday.

According to David Watson and Carl Öman, responsible for the study that developed from Oxford, this situation is not unique to Facebook and, meanwhile, is also located on from other social networks. They also acknowledged that the data were not 100% reliable, given the caveats mentioned above. In any case, what they seek, it is discuss and think about the management of information left on the Internet after death.

"There will come a time when the management of our digital heritage will affect all those who use social networkssince we will all die one day and leave our data behind us. But the totality of the profiles of the deceased users is also equivalent to something larger than the sum of its parts. That is or will be at least part of our global digital heritage, "they commented.

After all, after Öhman, "these statistics lead to new and difficult questions about who is entitled to all these datahow they should be treated according to the interests of the family and friends of the deceased and their use by future historians to understand the past ".

"Facebook should invite historians, archivists and archaeologists participate in the process of handling the vast amount of accumulated data that we leave when we die, "concludes Watson.