What Happens to Your Social Media Accounts After You Die

Only Facebook offers this today, through a Legacy Contact.

What they can do: pin a tribute post to your profile, respond to new friend requests, update your profile and cover photo, and — if you enable it — download an archive of what you've shared. What they can't do: log in as you, read your private messages, or post as you. One thing worth knowing: if you never choose a Legacy Contact and someone else later has your account memorialized after you're gone, it generally can't be changed or managed after that point — this is a decide-now setting, not a figure-it-out-later one.

• Go to Settings & Privacy > Settings > Accounts Center > Personal Details > Account Ownership and Control > Memorialization
• Choose a friend as your Legacy Contact — they need to already be connected to you on Facebook and be 18 or older — or choose to have your account deleted instead
• You can notify them now, or let Facebook handle that later

Different, even though it's the same company. Instagram doesn't offer an advance Legacy Contact at all. After a death, anyone can request that a profile be memorialized by providing proof, like a link to an obituary. The profile then shows "Remembering" and can't be logged into by anyone. Permanent deletion is possible, but it's restricted to a verified immediate family member or legal representative.

None of these let you plan ahead the way Facebook does. Either way, on any of them, login credentials are never shared with family.

• LinkedIn — anyone can report a member as deceased, which memorializes the profile with an "In Remembrance" tag; a personal representative or other legally authorized representative can instead request the account be closed entirely, with a death certificate and documentation of their authority
• X (formerly Twitter) — no memorialization option exists at all; the only outcome is deactivation, and it requires a death certificate along with the requester's ID — direct messages and login access are never released to family
• TikTok — no memorialization option; family can request deletion with proof of death, otherwise the account simply remains inactive indefinitely

Two things, and they matter more than any setting.

• Decide what you'd actually want — memorialized, deleted, or just left alone — for the accounts that matter to you
• Tell someone. Even without a formal Legacy Contact feature, your family can request memorialization or deletion on nearly every platform once they know that's what you wanted, and roughly which accounts exist

Under Digital > Social Media, list the platforms that matter to you and note your preference for each — memorialized or deleted. You don't need to record login information here; none of these platforms will use it for this purpose regardless.