Social media after death: who controls your digital legacy?

Social media platforms operate under their own terms and conditions and are heavily shaped by privacy law and fraud-prevention measures. In practice, family members often cannot simply “take over” an account, even where they are executors. Instead, the platform may offer only specific outcomes, such as memorialisation, deletion, or limited management by a nominated legacy contact.

What counts as your social media legacy?

Your social media legacy is more than the public-facing profile. It can include direct messages, private groups, photo and video archives, linked cloud storage, contacts, and even pages or channels you manage for a business or community. Some of this content may have financial value (for example, monetised accounts), but for many people, its value is personal: it tells a story and preserves relationships.

A key point is that many social media services are provided on a licence basis. You may have the right to use the platform during your lifetime, but you do not necessarily “own” the account in a way that allows it to be transferred like a physical possession. What happens after death may therefore depend on the provider’s rules, the settings you chose during your lifetime, and the evidence your family can provide.

Where someone has died, social media issues typically fall into three key areas: control, privacy, and security.

Families and executors frequently encounter:

• Uncertainty over whether an account should be memorialised, closed, or left untouched.
• Inability to access messages, photos, or videos needed for practical reasons (for example, funeral arrangements) or for longer-term remembrance.
• Concerns about privacy: who should see past posts, tagged photos, or private conversations.
• Security risks if an account is left unmanaged, including impersonation, hacking, or distressing “memories” notifications.
• Problems where the deceased managed a page or profile for a club, charity, or business, and no one else has administrator rights.

These issues can become particularly challenging when a phone, tablet, or main email account is locked.

To help you ensure your accounts are handled in line with your wishes, consider the following:

• Decide the outcome you want for each platform. For example, memorialisation, deletion, or leaving the account active for a period. Consider whether you want a final post notifying friends/follower.
• Use each provider’s built-in tools. Where available, set up legacy contacts, inactive account settings, and account closure options.
• Make sure someone can access the “gateway” accounts. Social media is often tied to a main email address and a phone for two-factor authentication. If those are inaccessible, everything else can be blocked.
• Record what matters to you from a privacy perspective. For example, whether private messages should remain private, and whether photos should be downloaded and preserved for the family.
• Check administrator rights for any pages you run. If you manage a business page, group, or charity account, ensure there is at least one additional trusted administrator.
• Link this to your wider estate planning documents. Your Will and any supporting letters of wishes can include clear authority and guidance on your digital footprint, while access information should be stored securely (not written into the Will itself).

Social media is only one part of a modern digital estate, but it is often the part with the greatest personal impact. By making clear, platform-by-platform choices now, you can protect your privacy, reduce the risk of accounts being misused, and help your family preserve the memories that matter.

If you would like advice on planning for social media after death, or you would like to review how your wider digital footprint is addressed in your Will, please contact a member of our Private Wealth team.