“Their Page is Still Up”: Social Media and Coping with Loss

Abstract

Young adults use social media (SM) to share life events, including loss of loved ones. In a national sample of U.S. young adults (n ¼ 1,119), "grievers" were identified as those who had experienced the loss of a loved one who had a SM account (n ¼ 415, 37%). Logistic regression analyses found that grievers and non-grievers did not differ by sociodemographic status. Content analysis of open-ended items revealed four ways in which SM had a positive influence and five ways in which it had a negative influence on grievers. This study could inform the development of strategies to optimize SM use among grievers.

Exploring Young Millennials’ Motivations for Grieving Death Through Social Media

“…Thus, social media should be incorporated to allow this theory to be applied to modern grieving practices. The in-depth findings here mirror the analysis of open-ended questionnaire responses from Hoffman et al (2021). Also, the findings suggest the theory of continuing bonds (Klass et al, 1996) is temporally biased and requires SMS to be recognised as a way to facilitate continuing bonds for younger grievers.…”

“…This is because young millennials are potentially illequipped with enough life experience (Hooyman & Kramer, 2006) and may not be fully socially or emotionally mature yet (Hirooka et al, 2017). The experience of online grieving in young adults was investigated by Hoffman et al (2021), though this sample was not a young millennial sample, a group as established above that may have different experiences and responses to loss. Further exploration is needed here, and with a specifically young millennial sample.…”