In her article "Generation Why", Zadie Smith suggests that individuals' Facebook pages that outlive their owners suggest a sort of ongoing legacy, such that the person may have died, but their Facebook lives on. Aside from the issue of taste of posting on such individuals' profiles after they have died that Smith tackles, the implicit suggestion that an individual's Facebook page can become their lasting legacy after they die is an interesting, if somewhat morbid, issue.

The question rests upon whether or not a person's Facebook page constitutes a part of themselves that lives beyond the individual's death. If we ignore the possibility that such a page is deleted by request of a family member or other loved one, the page will continue to exist, if unattended to, as long as Facebook exists as a social networking website. If the site continues to exist, which seems to be the case for the forseeable future, then the page representing that individual will persist.

Is this a problem? It seems at least somewhat concerning that our likeness will remain online beyond our own existence, even if we consented and contributed to that likeness being online in the first place. The remaining Facebook page of those who have passed away seems to be an unexpected conseqence of having such a page in the first place: the risk that that page will remain if the creator of the page dies unexpectedly. Since the kinds of accidental deaths that result in such circumstances cannot be predicted, the only solution to the problem would be to ask Facebook to delete the page, which families have done in the past. Either way, such a sad scenario presents an interesting case of the unforseen consequences of using social networks.