“ME and 800mi of Road Pounding Motorcycle riding. Just me and the road. Man do I need this break.”

That is the last post that NIU student Alex Hartung made on his Facebook profile. Over 100 messages of memories, condolences and birthday wishes follow.

Hartung was killed in a car accident on Sept. 20.

When someone close dies, people look for ways to stay close to them. They look at pictures, think of memories and talk about the person. In today’s advanced technological times, much of that is done on Facebook.

Facebook has a policy that is put in place when it is notified that a user has passed away.

“We memorialize their account to protect their privacy,” the Web site says on its privacy page.
“Memorializing the account removes certain sensitive information and sets the privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in search.”

The user’s Facebook wall remains available for friends to leave comments and memories.

“When Alex died, I realized what a social network Facebook was,” said Hartung’s father, Adam. “It allowed interaction from all aspects of Alex’s life, from friends who live out of state to his engineering friends from school.”

Facebook previously had a policy that removed a user’s page after only 30 days of being memorialized, but that policy changed after the Web site tried to take the pages of the victims of the shooting at Virginia Tech offline and met resistance. The deceased user’s page can still be permanently taken offline at the request of close family members.

Adam Hartung wanted to go a different route.

“We were fortunate because Alex’s brother knew his password so we can get on his Facebook and welcome anyone,” he said. “Facebook allows me to interact with younger people on an equal plane. I have met so many of Alex’s friends, and it has been hugely beneficial.”

Facebook groups are also used to memorialize those that have passed away.

“One of my friends was killed in a car accident and his Facebook page was deleted,” said Scott Semenek, senior kinesiology and physical education major. “A bunch of his friends decided to make a Facebook group in his honor.”

This is another popular form of memorializing, as a search of “RIP” on the site yields over 129,000 results.

Hartung is embracing Facebook as an aid to his grieving.

“With my generation, we would just make an obituary and wait for people to stop by and give condolences,” he said. “With the Facebook page, it is much more interactive.”

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