“I’m not planning on dying anytime soon!”: A Survey of Digital Legacy Planning

Increasing technology integration into daily life has broadened the concept of legacy to include the digital footprint individuals leave behind. However, the lack of social norms, design, and legal frameworks to prepare a digital legacy may challenge users and data inheritors. We conducted a survey to understand the experiences of users who have either prepared for their own digital legacy or inherited someone else’s digital legacy. We found that most participants did not make any preparations due to a lack of motivator triggers, discomfort in dealing with the topic of death, and the burden of handling an overwhelming task. Users who did prepare did not consider the entirety of their digital footprint and digital identity elements. They prioritized passing accounts with financial significance and typically created physical lists of their passwords to be found by the inheritor. Inheritors reported navigating uncertainty in handling the leaver’s data due to the lack of clear instructions or social norms. We suggest further research to develop tools that can assist users in creating and managing their digital legacies effectively, as well as integrating awareness of this subject into software design to prompt users to make decisions and take action on the matter.