Haruki Murakami, in his most talked-about book, Norwegian Wood, says, “Death is not the opposite of life but an innate part of it.” And yet somehow, death as a concept eludes humans the most. The renowned psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud claims that “we cannot imagine our death; whenever we do so, we find that we survive ourselves as spectators.” Hence, one can only understand the fatality of our existence through the performance of the act, either via the imitation of a social norm or through the media. Thus, the 13-day ritualistic exercise, as per Hindi philosophical tradition, allows one to negotiate the incomprehensible. From following numerous traditions to repeating the exact moment of your loved one’s departure, to finally finding a social commune through the shared emotion of sadness, it is nothing but an act of letting your person go.

But what happens when death isn’t mediated through traditional forms of rituals or the physical presence of human communication? What happens when social media becomes a new platform for grief? When the mourner doesn’t just articulate the heavy emotion of death for themselves, but also for the world to hear? Does it become another spectacle for the digital world or just a new way to bargain with the loss?

With the rise of social media, grief, once a personal, private, or local event, is now pulled into the public space and opened for anyone to react to. Sociologists studying digital mourning suggest that social media has transformed grief from a largely private experience into a networked practice in which mourning is collectively expressed and witnessed. What once remained confined within family circles or ritual spaces now unfolds across digital networks, where expressions of loss circulate, gather responses, and form temporary communities of empathy.

It might feel performative. However, the very act of giving words to loss and releasing them into the universe might not be for spectacle. Rather, it might be a flawed yet powerful attempt to let the person who is gone know: I miss you. The post, the story, the caption, the reel, none of it might be for witness. It might not be for likes, comments, sympathy, or wise words. In a world of busy people, it might be a simple gesture of vulnerability offered to almost no one in particular, with the quiet hope that one human story might connect with another.

Some social science research concludes the same premise. According to a 2017 study published in Nature Human Behaviour, exposure to and reactions to death-related social media posts can bring people closer. A 2010 study had similar results, finding that social networks “enable or empower individuals marginalised by more traditional forms of memorialization.” Grief scholars Dennis Klass, Phyllis R. Silverman, and Steven Nickman, in their influential work “Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief,” argue that mourning is not necessarily about abandoning ties with the deceased but about transforming the relationship with them. In this sense, social media may offer a space where the bereaved continue to address the dead, maintaining an ongoing emotional bond rather than abruptly letting go.

Then the question remains: who should have the power to document the loss on social media? The increasing trend of paying tribute to the deceased’s family on Facebook or Instagram brings a new set of complexities to digital grief. Often, those on the periphery of the loss, in an honest attempt to show solidarity, may come across as insensitive through the circulation of pictures of the dead or of the family grieving, marking the occasion on social media almost like checking in at a hotel. These posts could be triggering to the person most central to the grief, drawing them into a constant loop of sadness, a continuous connection related back to the death through features like yearly memories on digital platforms.

Digital platforms increasingly function as archives of personal memory. In this environment, grief is no longer bound by the temporal limits of ritual. Instead, it becomes entangled with algorithms that repeatedly resurface photographs, posts, and reminders. Unlike traditional mourning practices that gradually guide individuals toward closure, digital platforms often preserve grief in an ongoing present, where the dead reappear unexpectedly through automated memories and notifications. In this sense, social media does not merely display grief; it reshapes the relationship between the living and the dead.

(The writer is a PhD scholar at the Centre for Media Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University and a film critic.)