Social Media Legacy

"Our son was 17. When he died, we couldn't get back into any of his accounts — and no one had prepared for that."

When Callum passed away suddenly at just 17, his parents were left devastated — and then faced with something they'd never considered: his entire digital life was locked away. His Instagram, his Snapchat, his TikTok — full of videos, messages from friends, photos they had never seen. All of it, inaccessible.

"The platforms had automatically logged him out after a period of inactivity," his mother recalls. "We had his phone, but the apps had expired sessions and we couldn't get past the login screens without his passwords. And because he was young, he'd never thought to tell anyone."

"We contacted the platforms one by one. Some asked for death certificates. Some asked for court orders. One just never replied. Nobody had been named as a legacy contact — there was no one legally authorised to act on his behalf. The accounts just sat there, frozen. His TikTok profile was eventually taken down entirely."

His father added: "Those messages from his friends, the videos he made, the photos — those were his voice. And we can't get to them. We didn't know you had to plan for this. No one tells you."

If Callum had documented his accounts here — even just noting his usernames and naming a parent as the authorised contact — his family could have submitted a formal request immediately. They could have preserved his memories, downloaded his photos, and had somewhere for his friends to leave tributes.