Death technologies and digital afterlife: An ethical perspective

Abstract Technological advances are beginning to change the timeline and finality of death, and these emerging death technologies affect the dying, survivors, and society in unprecedented ways. We systematize current, emerging, and imagined technologically mediated or enabled human-death relationships through our REAL framework, which considers three areas of death technologies: digital R emembrance, life E xtension, and digital A fter L ife. These technologies extend consumption beyond the consumer life cycle into a consumer death cycle, raising profound ethical and marketing questions. Based on a thematic synthesis of recurring ethical principles, we conceptualize the CARE principles— C ontrol, A ccountability, R espect, and E quity—and illustrate implications for the (future) deceased, the bereaved, providers, and policymakers. Our work offers a starting point for understanding the complex ethical and marketing challenges of death technologies and the digital afterlife by developing a conceptual and ethical framework that clarifies how these technologies are organized, embedded, and governed within market systems. We also extend foundational concepts of consumer vulnerability, co-creation, and extended self into posthumous contexts, and lays out a research agenda.