Set up a legacy contact on each of your social media accounts; your family will thank you.
The evocative new term “digital afterlife” can refer to a few different phenomena. Some AI startups are promising to recreate the personas of deceased loved ones using the digital traces they left behind–a digital “life after life,” of a kind. Talking to a hologram that looks and sounds like a family member after they’re gone? As intriguingly dystopian as that is, it’s not the kind of digital afterlife we’re talking about today. Rather, we’re dealing with another, more common, use of the term that refers simply to “your online presence and digital assets after death.” This presence can include your bank accounts, email accounts, digital wills, and, of course, social media.
As many of us have experienced, the digital afterlife of a loved one’s social media can prompt both poignant and painful moments. Reviewing the person’s photos and posts can feel like a gift; but it’s jarring when Facebook asks if you want to invite them to an upcoming event. And families may find themselves confused about how to deal with this social media afterlife in a way that honors their loved one’s wishes and privacy. There are steps to take, both before and after a person’s death, to pave the way for a smooth transition of their social media accounts.
Planning for the Digital Afterlife of Your Social Media
You can do two things now that will ease the way for your loved ones when it’s time to manage your social media afterlife.
Use Legacy Contact Features. First, use the legacy contact feature on Facebook, Instagram, Google, and Apple. A legacy contact is a person you designate who will be granted access to manage your account after your death. In most cases, the legacy contact does not have access to everything in your account, such as private messages, but they will have the power to either delete your account or memorialize it.
A memorialized Facebook page uses the phrase “Remembering” above the name of the person who died, and that person’s wall often turns into a place for friends to post tributes. A legacy contact on Facebook can approve or reject tributes on the person’s wall and change the privacy settings on different posts. They can also request that the account be deleted instead.
To set an Apple legacy contact, you’ll need to designate the person under Settings, Privacy & Security, and then share a long code with that person, either via encrypted text or with a printout. That person may still need to provide a death certificate to access the account. An Apple account may be linked to a wide variety of digital presences, including banks and credit cards, so this level of security makes sense. With any digital account, make sure the person you’re naming is someone you trust.
Create a Social Media Will. While it will be helpful to name individual legacy contacts with each social media account that matters to you, another great step to take is to create a social media will. My Wishes has a template for an online will, including a social media section, that will make the process easy. A will goes beyond choosing a legacy contact; it gives you the chance to state exactly how you would like each of your accounts handled after death. Loved ones will know exactly what steps to take.
Managing a Loved One’s Social Media Afterlife
When a loved one has died without taking either of these steps, families may wonder what to do. Some may feel a sense of urgency to gain access to social media accounts in order to close them.
Personal Representatives Aren’t Automatically Digital Executors. If the will doesn’t specify anything about online accounts, or if there is no will, the executor of the person’s estate may or may not be able to gain control over their social media accounts. According to the American Bar Association, the legal access that executors are granted to social media accounts of the deceased varies greatly by state and by the company that holds the account. Some states even have laws that prohibit people from accessing a deceased person’s online accounts, even when the person has the username and password. In such a murky situation, it may be necessary to research how to gain control over each individual social media account. It could be critical to get support from someone who knows this territory.
Ask for Help from a Professional. The digital afterlife industry is professionalizing as we speak. Founded in 2021, Professional After Loss Services (PALS) is an organization that supports after-loss professionals who “provide logistical and administrative services for clients who are executors or administrators of a loved one's estate.” Their clients are widows and widowers, estate executors, and surviving family members. An after-loss professional can help with much more than dealing with a loved one’s social media afterlife, but this topic is squarely within their wheelhouse. Use their directory to find certified after-loss pros in your area. There are already so many details to deal with after the death of a loved one, and social media accounts can be a surprisingly stressful element in the mix. An after-loss pro can help.
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