Society's obsession with social networking is making it harder than ever for the bereaved and broken-hearted to move on.
From Facebook to Twitter, the data and images documenting people's lives has been blamed for prolonging the pain of losing a loved one, either through death or the break-up of a relationship.
Discussing how cyber culture affects the grieving process, one of Britain's leading scientists, Sir Nigel Shadbolt, said: 'When bad, sad or indifferent things happened to us, over time you forgot. That is why time could be a great healer.
Haunted: Sir Nigel Shadbolt suggests social media is making it increasingly difficult to move on from the death of a loved one or a break-up
'But If you've got this complete authentic playback of people and episodes, it'll be quite haunting.'
And rather than being a comfort, Sir Norman suggests lingering online photos and messages can actually cause more distress.
More...
He added: 'One of the things that human psychology has evolved to do is forgetting. We don't have perfect recall, we didn't used to have this way of things being represented back to us.'
The academic is just one of several influential figures who have called for social network users to be offered the option to delete or adapt their archives.
Jonathan Zittrain, Professor of Law at Harvard University, said social media profiles should have 'expiration dates', adding: 'What I share with friends now I may wish only to share with family many years later — or it could be the opposite.'
Prolonged pain: Harvard professor Jonathan Zittrain, Professor of Law at Harvard University, said social media should have 'expiration dates' so users can delete and edit their archives
Meanwhile, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Professor of Internet Governance at the University of Oxford, suggests that being able to see the online profile of people who have hurt us could actually hinder our ability to forgive.
He explained: 'Psychologists tell us that forgetting and forgiving are intertwined — as we forgive somebody, our brain depreciates the memory of wrongdoing because it is no longer relevant to how we judge that person. Forgiving without forgetting is very difficult.'
The claims come days after Bling Ring author Nancy Jo Sales interviewed teenagers in the U.S. who explained how social networking was destroying their lives.
Her study for Vanity Fair magazine said youngsters used sites such as Facebook to combat loneliness, but many actually suffered depression, anxiety and feelings of isolation, which, she claimed, was acerbated by social media
