Online grieving, whether on Facebook or other social media, is becoming the new normal…but does it actually help?
After the campus shootings in the U.S. at Virginia Tech in 2007 and Northern Illinois University in 2008, hundreds of affected students turned to social media websites to share their grief and search for solace. A study of these students found that their online activities neither helped nor harmed their long-term psychological health.
The study gave a first-of-its-kind portrait of student reactions to shootings on their campuses. It also documented both the online and off-line activities they engaged in to memorialize and recover from these events.
The authors of the study—doctoral student Amanda Vicary and psychology professor R. Chris Fraley—were the first to study online psychological responses and grieving behaviours.
We speak with Amanda Vicary about the study, its findings, and its implications.
