Continuing Bonds

Continuing bonds is a theory of grief, developed by Klass, Silverman and Nickman in the 1990s, which holds that healthy mourning often involves maintaining an ongoing relationship with a deceased or absent loved one rather than achieving closure and 'letting go'. Continuing-bonds practices include conversation, ritual, keepsakes and, increasingly, digital activities such as maintaining social media profiles, voice-mail archives, and griefbots trained on the deceased's communications. The concept is used in HCI grief research to frame digital tools as legitimate supports for mourning and to evaluate the design implications of technologies that extend or disrupt such bonds.