When Digital Legacies Matter: Planning Your Online Footprint After You’re Gone

The rest of us spend years cultivating an internet legacy without stopping to think about who will inherit it after we’re gone. Social media postings, blogs, photos, broadcasts, newsletters, even inactive accounts, they all persist long after life is lived and done.

That thought might seem strange, even macabre, but it’s one to keep in the back of your head, your digital legacies.

Start By Listing Your Digital Life

One of the immediate steps to take is to create a list of all of the sites that you utilize. You might be amazed at how long a list you have. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, personal sites, cloud drives, subscriptions, and even dated storage sites that were thought to be a bright idea. 

Plan Ahead with Attentive Instructions

Not all sites make this process straightforward. Some let you designate a legacy contact or make preconditions. Others make your relatives submit proof of death and go through a tedious process. If you’ve ever attempted to navigate a straightforward customer service issue, you’ll understand how infuriating that is. 

Deciding How You Want to Be Remembered

Consider tone nearly as much as you consider content. Do you want your Instagram account to remain public, like a scrapbook, or would you rather it be private? Do you want your site to stay live with a commentary about your practice, or to be closed privately? There is no perfect solution. The important thing is that the decision seems authentically yours. 

Understand The Worth Of Digital Assets

There’s the issue of value, too. For some, their digital assets really have financial value. Their blogs earn money, their YouTube channels earn money, and their online stores keep selling. Turning over the keys to those accounts is as much a part of getting ready to die as turning over keys to a bank account. And while we don't typically consider tweets or short posts to be assets, they can have emotional or reputational value that's worthy of attention.

Leave A Legacy That Emotionally Connects

Discussing legacies is not always comfortable to ask about, but can be reassuringly odd. It’s trusting the individuals that you mention, and it prevents confusion down the line. Leaving a document with your passwords kept somewhere safe can even prevent hours of anguish. Some individuals even compose messages that they want posted about themselves, and that provide loved ones with a way of saying goodbye using words that can be truly their own. If you want to take this thinking off-line and into the rest of your life, then planning your offline legacy is a good idea. Just as you would want your off-line accounts to be handled with dignity, having a will ensures your intentions are made clear with respect to all of the rest. You can learn more about that here. 

Why That Makes A Big Difference

The idea of planning after life isn't easy. But covering your tracks post-life is an act of courtesy. It prevents your loved ones from making decisions out of confusion, and it lets them retain about themselves the part of you that mattered the least. Small or large, your track is your tale. And deciding how that tale co-exists is one of the very personal choices that you will ever have to make.

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