Digital Memorials: Meaningful Ways to Remember Someone Online

When someone we love dies, a surprising amount of them is left online: photos, posts, messages, a profile that still has their face on it. It can feel strange to leave it and strange to delete it. The good news is there are gentle options in between.

This isn’t a complete guide to grief, and it doesn’t need to be done all at once. It’s a short list of things that help.

Memorialize their social accounts

Facebook lets an account be turned into a memorial, and lets people choose a legacy contact in advance. That person can pin a post to the top of the profile (useful for sharing funeral details), update the profile and cover photos, and respond to new friend requests. They can’t log in as the person or read their private messages. If the account holder allowed it, the legacy contact can also download an archive of what they shared (more on how it works).

It’s worth checking the settings on other platforms you use too, since many offer some way to memorialize or close an account after a death.

Decide what happens to your own accounts

The kindest thing you can do for the people you’ll leave behind is to make this decision yourself. Google’s Inactive Account Manager lets you choose how long your account can sit unused (3, 6, 12, or 18 months) before Google acts. You can pick up to 10 people to be notified and choose which of your data they can download. Google warns you a month before anything happens, in case you’re simply on a long holiday (Google’s explanation).

Fifteen minutes now saves your family a lot of guessing later.

Make a tribute page or online obituary

Funeral homes often host online obituaries, and there are services built for memorial pages where friends can add photos and stories. These are good for gathering memories from people you might not know: old colleagues, school friends, neighbours.

Gather the photos before they scatter

Photos of one person end up spread across a dozen phones. Ask everyone to drop theirs into one shared album. It’s one of the most valuable things a family can end up with, and it gets harder the longer you wait.

Put them somewhere they’ll be seen

Some people want something more public than a private album: a small mark that says “this person mattered,” out in the world.

That’s one of the ways people use TheWorldsBillboard. It’s a shared online billboard where anyone can claim a space with a name, a photo, and a link, starting at $3. One of the earliest spaces, Stan, is a tribute to the founder’s dog, with a caption that says everything it needs to: “Stan the man.” (We wrote about it in every space tells a story.)

A few practical notes if you’re considering it:

• Every image and link is reviewed before it goes live, and anything rejected is refunded.
• Your space gets its own page you can share with family, and you can link it to an obituary, a fundraiser, or a favourite song.
• Others can add to the same space later, so friends can help it grow.
• It’s a living billboard rather than a guaranteed permanent record, so keep the original photos somewhere safe too.

Keep it simple

There’s no right way to do any of this. A memorialized profile, a shared album, a pinned post, a small square on a billboard with their name on it. The point isn’t the tool. It’s that someone took a moment to say: they were here, and we remember.

If you’d like to see how creating a space works, it’s explained step by step on the how it works page.