‘You Can’t Delete a Memory’: Managing the Data Past on Social Media in Everyday Life

Abstract

This article explores how the data past on social media, in the form of packaged ‘memories’, is managed by people in everyday life. Drawing on interview and focus group data, I examine how people make sense of data as ‘memories’ and how these are negotiated and managed when considered painful, awkward, or simply ‘out of place’. As such, the article outlines and discusses three specific ‘tactics’ used to manage the data past in everyday life. First, I explore the use of ‘deletion’ and how it foregrounds ways in which people seek to render certain aspects of their data past invisible, especially memories considered painful or inconsistent with the current view of self. Second, through the tactic of ‘delaying’, the article examines how some participants sought to delay emotional engagements with digital memories rather than to delete them. Finally, the tactic of ‘linking’ highlights the ways in which people sought to make sense of data as memories that were insufficiently contextualised, disjointed, or that felt simply out of place. As such, the article contributes to our understanding of the ways in which people make sense of data as well as some of the complex dynamics inherent in contemporary digital memory work.