When people die, they leave behind a vast digital footprint. Our generation is the first to face what happens to social media after death as a part of a new kind of online afterlife. Like it or not, virtual funerals, memorial pages, and 'digital ghosts' are now part of our cultural landscape.
According to a study by the Oxford Internet Institute, by the end of this century the number of deceased Facebook users could reach nearly five billion, surpassing the living ones. But who controls your online legacy? Who can access your accounts? And what really happens to your digital self when you’re gone?
Click through this gallery to see how archaeology’s weird future may lie not just beneath the earth, but within the digital ruins we leave behind.