"[Death] is one of the least well thought-through things about social media," Tama Leaver, senior lecturer at Curtin University's Department of Internet Studies, told 720 ABC Perth.
"There's all this excitement about getting on board and talking to each other, but what we do with the stuff that is left behind is something that they [social media users] have had to retrospectively figure out."
The problem is most acute for the world's biggest social network Facebook, which is now over 10 years old and has more than 1.5 billion active users.
Around 8,000 Facebook account holders die every day, with some estimates putting the number of profiles belonging to dead people as high as 30 million.
Facebook has now introduced the option to add a legacy contact to your profile but few people are aware of it, according to Dr Leaver.
"It is a limited function, it doesn't mean that you get control of someone's account, it only means you can post a message after they pass away," he said.
"They can't go back and edit or delete stuff."
Once the legacy contact posts a final message, the profile is then memorialised by Facebook.
Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-29/what-happens-to-your-social-media-accounts-when-you-die/7281832
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