This isn’t exactly the lightest of topics, but as we spend so much of our daily lives on social media it makes sense to know what happens to everything we put out there for the world to see. Does that embarrassing video of you tripping over your own shoe laces and landing face first in a ditch just stay on the internet forever? What about all those times you were tagged in pictures that you’d rather not remember now, never mind in 50 years time?
If you do nothing, and nobody lets Facebook know that you’ve passed, then it will in fact stay there indefinitely. Facebook have no policy that says if you haven’t interacted with it in x amount of years then they’ll just delete it, they would rather keep as much content on there for as long as possible so that they remain relevant.
They do offer a couple of alternative options though, both of which offer up different benefits that you may wish to consider, although they do both rely on a friend or family member reporting to Facebook that you have passed. If you want to see how to report the death of a friend or family member to Facebook then this can be done here:
https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/234739086860192
Once someone has reported to Facebook that you have passed, one of two things will happen. Either your account will be memorialised, which means that it will stay open for people to browse and leave tributes, or it will be deleted entirely. If you do nothing prior to your death, then your account will be memorialised, but if you don’t want this to happen then you need to do something about it now.
In that same ‘Memorialisation settings’ section you will see a place where you can enter what’s known as a Legacy Contact. If you choose not to have your account deleted after death and it instead becomes a Memorial page, your Legacy Contact will be able to approve or delete tributes, accept new friend requests, and also request that your account is deleted.
Instagram are now actually owned by Facebook, and so their options are quite similar to those outlined above; you can request that your account is deleted after death, or you can leave it to be memorialised. The one thing they don’t offer at the moment is the option of selecting a Legacy Contact. More about the options available on your Instagram account can be found here:
https://help.instagram.com/264154560391256Twitter is a little bit more limited in that they have no memorialisation feature. Your account can just be left as it is, so it remains active and people can continue to interact with it, or it can be deleted entirely. Twitter are a little bit more strict on who can report a death though, and they will only follow through with the request if it is done by an immediate family member with proof of ID and proof of passing. More information on this can be found here:
https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/contact-twitter-about-a-deceased-family-members-account
Hopefully this information proves useful to some. I truly believe that it is healthy to have open and honest discussions about what you want to happen after your passing, and these days deciding what happens to your social media could be just important as deciding what happens to any physical possessions.
For more on this topic, take a look at this article by Mirror.co.uk writer Danielle Elton:
Facebook can prepare you for a safe digital death by following these rules
