Social Media Footprints — Have You Planned for What Happens When You’re Not Here?

Over the years we’ve all become more friendly with social media, whether we’re texting our family and friends or whether or not we are adding a smiley face to the post of our latest grandchild playing a sport, and we share it on all our outlets too, because you know, we are proud!

Almost to a person, Facebook has now become where grandparents live and thrive, while children have jumped to Instagram and then over to TikTok, you’d be surprised to know that seniors are everywhere!

Statistics show that “55- to 65-year-olds make up 7.6% of Facebook’s user base, while those aged 65 and above represent just 6%” according to recent demographics. That’s as of approximately 250,000,000 Facebook users projected in 2024.

Think about your senior loved ones on Facebook — thanks to your encouragement, they

often have an important daily presence on at least Facebook, with very few on Twitter and a few more on Instagram.

Because Facebook gives you a chance to see photo collections, you are likely to enjoy sharing your photos or at least reviewing and clicking a response on the posts of your children and grandchildren. Particularly when seniors are geographically distant from their family can they enjoy your posted photo albums of baseball games, birthday celebrations, or other important and ceremonial occasions.

But, one day something happens, and the senior is no longer alive. Do you know how to get into the computer of your beloved senior to memorialize their Facebook page? Do you know what their wishes for deleting it immediately or delaying that by a few months to allow time for you to put a single notice up announcing their passing?

Are you aware that Facebook has a memorialization plan ?  There’s a specific process you have to accomplish to make that person’s account a Memorial account. Have you designated someone to address all of your web presence? Do you know who you want going through your old e-mails and or online photo albums? We never think about these things when we are feeling good, but that is always the perfect time to think of them,

Add to the fact that frequently we all have more than one social media presence: Facebook, Messenger, Skype, Instagram, Threads, YouTube, and then there are the e-mail addresses, texts with family and friends to disengage, etc. It’s important to alert others through a mass mailing that your loved one has passed away or simply close the account, depending on your mutual wishes.

The eeriest feeling can happen, though, when you have forgotten to appoint someone to do this for you before you need it and then a photo memory pops up in your feed, reminding you that “today” is the birthday of your friend or family member. It can be downright off-putting, sorry to say, to see the happy, smiling face of your loved one staring back at you as though they were still here.

And as long as they are no longer here, it really is bet to take the straight-on approach and get that information published on the various Internet platforms where it will help the grieving process and acceptance of their passing. It won’t take more than 30 minutes to complete the process but you either must designate a successor to the account or shut it down as you start to leave active use of the computer, preparing to leave the online world just as you found it to be used.

Good luck and if you have any questions about what to do or how to do it, please give us a call and we can walk you through the steps.