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A recent study has found that in the coming 50 years, the accounts of dead people on Facebook will outnumber the accounts of living.

Published in the Journal ‘Big Data and Society’, the study predicts that around 1.4 billion people on Facebook members will die before 2100 surpassing the alive by 2070.

With more than 2.2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most popular social network across the world.

"These statistics give rise to new and difficult questions around who has the right to all this data, how should it be managed in the best interests of the families and friends of the deceased and its use by future historians to understand the past," said the lead author Carl Ohman.

All of us will one day pass away and leave all our data behind.

Ohman added, "But the totality of the deceased user profiles also amounts to something larger than the sum of its parts. It is, or will at least become, part of our global digital heritage.”

The study works on two assumptions - the first one being that no new users joined Facebook as of 2018. If this trend continues, Asia's share of the dead raises to 44 percent by the end of the century.

The second case maintains that the users continue to increase by the present rate of 13 percent every year. In this context, Africa would hold the primary share of the dead. This rate shows that the number of dead users of social media giant might increase to 4.9 billion before the century ends.

"The results should be interpreted not as a prediction of the future, but as a commentary on the current development, and an opportunity to shape what future we are headed towards," explained Ohman.

By Sowmya Sangam