Handling death on social media

Oakwood High School graduate Zachary Johnson was just 19 when he was found unresponsive in January in Oklahoma, where he was attending college. His older sister, Erin, in grad school at Mississippi State, started driving toward Oklahoma, hoping for the best. But while still on the road, an acquaintance called her to express sympathy for the loss of her brother.

"Erin did not find out about her brother from us and that's pretty tragic, said their mother, Beth Johnson.

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Johnson said the family was unprepared for how astonishingly fast the bad news would travel via social media. Then grieving mother and daughter saw a few comments on Zach's Facebook page they perceived as inappropriate. When asked to take them down, these "friends" instead blocked Beth and Erin, preventing them from seeing the posts.

"I think what bothered me most was people messaging me, that I wasn't friends with, and asking me questions about what had happened before I even knew what had happened," said Erin.

Her mother received even more intrusive text messages. One of them she said, was shocking and offensive.

"I even had somebody ask if they could see Zachary. If he was here and if he could see him," Johnson said.

Centerville psychologist Dr. Dennis O'Grady says people in general don't know how to handle grief and social media has only magnified the problem.

"It requires that a person be really emotionally mature to handle and manage it," O'Grady said.

The digital team at Cox Media Group Ohio posts news stories on the WHIO website which sometimes involve death. Social media expert Rachel Lanka says most people comment respectfully, but the comments can vary depending on the manner of death.

"Particularly in this area with the opiod epidemic, overdoses, you get a lot of comments that are not so sensitive," said Lanka, who said her team is reluctant to censor remarks.

However, Lanka said Facebook often polices itself.

"There will be other people who jump in and say things like 'The family could read these comments,' or 'You don't know what was going on in that person's life,'" Lanka said.

She encourages those grieving to use Facebook to tell friends what they want. That is exactly what Chris McCullough did the night her 19-year old son passed away in March. The Huber Heights mother held back tears as she read her post aloud.

"Please don't ask me how it happened, or what happened. I just can't tell that story again. My boy is gone and that should be enough," McCullough said.

She asked Duncan's Facebook friends to share their memories of him. She later printed their comments on colorful pages that she taped to the wall at his celebration. Dr. O'Grady supports that.

"When people are grief-stricken, they need positives coming in and negatives to go out," he said.

Beth Johnson acknowledges that only a handful of people directed negative comments toward her family, but they were still hurtful. She urges those people on social media to hold off posting anything when they first hear of someone's death and avoid asking questions.

"I definitely think waiting until a family member posts, or at least 24 hours," said Johnson. "It's just not the time. It's just not the time."

Lanka said family members can contact Facebook to have their loved one's page memorialized or deleted altogether. Facebook members also have the option of designating someone to manage their page in the event of their death.