The Digital Afterlife: Psychological, Clinical and Ethical Dimensions of Technology-Mediated Bereavement

Recent advances in artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and immersive technologies are transforming how individuals experience grief, memory, presence, and relational continuity after death. Emerging phenomena such as griefbots, AI companions, virtual memorials, voice cloning, and immersive simulations are raising important psychological, clinical, ethical, and existential questions regarding the human experience of loss and mortality. Individuals are now able to interact with digital entities representing deceased loved ones, create AI avatars with agency, and construct virtual memorials that preserve identity beyond physical death. These technological capacities may contribute to reshaping human emotional responses to loss and continuity and require an integrated psychological understanding. Despite growing attention to these phenomena, significant gaps remain in understanding their long-term effects on grief, psychological health, memory, and well-being, as well as their broader ethical, clinical and existential consequences. This Research Topic aims to explore the psychological dimensions of the ‘digital afterlife’ focusing on how emerging technologies may influence bereavement processes, continuing bonds, meaning-making, psychological wellbeing, death anxiety, and emotional adaptation. While early research may show both potential therapeutic avenues and psychological risk, clinical evidence remains limited, and ethical considerations require further examination. The psychological mechanisms underlying engagement with digital representations of the deceased and their impact on clinical outcomes such as complicated grief, trauma, and meaning reconstruction represent a new research area for investigation. This collection aims to widen understanding of the clinical and psychological implications of the digital afterlife, with a focus on grief processes, death anxiety, psychotherapeutic approaches, and the ethical dimensions of technologically mediated remembrance. To gather further insights, this Research Topic welcomes comparative, theoretical, empirical, clinical, and interdisciplinary contributions addressing both the opportunities and the potential risks associated with AI- and VR-mediated interactions related to death, grief, and the ‘digital afterlife’. This may include, but is not limited to:• Psychological and emotional responses to AI- or VR-mediated grief experiences• Research explorations on the dimensions of digitally mediated bereavement• Therapeutic interventions, approaches, and clinical implications of digital grief interventions• Psychotherapeutic approaches to continuing bonds, identity, and meaning after loss• Ethical implications for approaches such as consent, voice cloning, and digital personhood• Empirical studies on clinical outcomes associated with digital afterlife technologies• Mechanisms of support in technological mourning practices for example clinician role in facilitating appropriate psychological care and grief support• Cultural and existential dimensions of technologically mediated remembrance• Wider research considerations such as the role of social media platforms in shaping collective mourning and legacy, accessibility to care, barriers to support. The topic seeks to bring together perspectives from clinical psychology, cyberpsychology, digital mental health, human-computer interaction, palliative care, consciousness studies, and ethics in order to advance a rigorous and clinically informed understanding of how technology could reshape human responses to mortality and loss. Topic editors: Silvia Francesca Maria Pizzoli, Clizia Cincidda Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/83103/the-digital-afterlife-psychological-clinical-and-ethical-dimensions-of-technology-mediated-bereavement