Social Memorials

Here’s a morbid question: what happens to your Facebook account when you die?

Facebook has policies for this. They can memorialize your account, which means it becomes a kind of digital gravestone where people can leave memories but no one can post new content. Or they can delete it entirely if that’s what you prefer.

But someone has to tell them you died. And they have to prove it. And they need to know what you wanted to happen to your account.

Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn – they all have different policies and different requirements. Some will transfer control to family members. Some will just freeze the account forever. Some will delete everything.

This might not seem important until you realize that your social media accounts contain years of photos, messages, and memories. They’re digital scrapbooks that your family might want to preserve or at least access temporarily.

Plus, there are practical considerations. If your accounts stay active but unmonitored, they can be targets for hackers or scammers. But if they get deleted immediately, your family might lose access to information they want.

The solution isn’t to avoid social media (though that’s never a bad option). The solution is to think about what you want to happen and document those preferences in the Ending Note where your family can find them. And were systems allow, set that up now.

Because “Figure it out when the time comes” isn’t really a plan.