Is it okay to publicly discuss the death of loved ones on social networks?

What is definitely abnormal is to bait a person for expressing grief “wrong”.

In a weekly column, Olga Lukinova, an expert on digital etiquette, answers topical questions related to communication on the Internet. Do not miss it if you actively use social networks and instant messengers or just send business letters from time to time. And ask your questions in the comments!

Olga Lukinova

Author of the book and Telegram channel “Digital etiquette».

What happened

Users very ambiguously perceived how the girl-blogger Ekaterina Didenko, who lost her husband, experienced the loss. The main complaints boiled down to two aspects:

• The blogger expresses negative emotions too openly and involves his subscribers in it. You can't grieve so publicly.
• The blogger is promoting the death of a loved one. You can't make subscribers, attention and money so cynically.

What the scandal showed

Russian users have perfectly mastered the language of “successful success” and know how to talk about their victories and achievements and how to react to such posts. But the language and practice of talking about sad events and expressing negative emotions have not yet been fully formed.

This is confirmed by the surveyPoll on the channel "Digital etiquette" on the Digital Etiquette channel: 56% of participants believe that publicly grieving in social networks is not permissible, and 44% are sure that it is permissible. A slight preponderance indicates that the norm has not yet been formed.

Now in the information space, in fact, not a specific case with death at a birthday party is being discussed, and the norm of behavior in such situations: it is appropriate or inappropriate to grieve in public and how grief should express yourself.

The second thing that history has shown is that there are different practices of using social networks and often they do not get along with each other. Some post carefully selected and edited staged photos on Instagram, while others literally exist live, showing their whole life to subscribers. Both of them can earn popularity and money on social networks, but these extremes do not get along well with each other.

What digital etiquette prescribes in such a situation

If no generally accepted norms have yet been formed, then the only thing for which in this case the user could be blamed is the violation of someone else's digital space and other people's boundaries. But Catherine does not break them: she grieves and expresses negative emotions on her own page, does not force anyone to subscribe to her and watch Stories.

Moreover, since the tragedy, she has 600 thousand new subscribers. And more questions are raised by the behavior of those people who specifically subscribe to watch someone else's drama, show condemnation and leave negative comments to the blogger's address. Personal messages and comments about a person already seriously violate the boundaries of another person and directly contradict the rules of etiquette and the norms of politeness. It is significant that 85% of the respondents consideredPoll on the channel "Digital etiquette" It is unethical to publicly condemn a person for grief on social media. Bullying does real harm, as opposed to public mourning.

Can there be norms at all, how to grieve correctly

Such a complex area as the loss of loved ones, sooner or later, will itself form a request for regulation, because difficult situations are easier to live with when there are clear rules to be followed. That is why all mourning rituals are so carefully observed in real life. Over time, the concept of living grief will also come to digital life, not as restrictions on freedom, but as help and support for people who have faced tragedy.