Why only 26% of UK adults have a digital legacy plan

A 2024 Law Society survey found that only 26% of UK adults have a clear plan for what happens to their digital life when they die. A separate 2023 study found that 60% of adults haven't given their loved ones any instructions for accessing their digital accounts at all.

That's not because people don't care. It's because "digital legacy planning" doesn't feel urgent until, suddenly, it is.

The gap isn't about willingness, it's about friction

Ask most people whether their family would know how to get into their email, their banking apps, or their photo library if something happened to them, and the honest answer is usually "no, not really." Ask them if they've done anything about it, and the answer is usually the same.

The problem isn't that people don't want their family taken care of. It's that "sort out my digital accounts" has no obvious first step, no deadline, and no one checking in on whether you've done it. Writing a will at least has centuries of social pressure behind it. Digital legacy planning doesn't yet.

What "doing something" actually looks like

It doesn't have to mean documenting every account you've ever created. A useful starting point is much smaller:

• Where are the two or three accounts that matter most: banking, email, the accounts everything else logs in through?
• Who would you want to have access, and under what circumstances?
• Is there anything you'd specifically want cancelled rather than left running?

That's a version of digital legacy planning that takes twenty minutes, not a weekend. The rest can be filled in over time.

Why this matters more with each passing year

The average person's digital footprint only grows: more subscriptions, more logins, more accounts that exist only as a username and a password nobody else knows. Every account you open today is one more thing someone else will eventually have to work out how to close, without your help, unless you've left a trail.

Kistkeep exists for exactly this reason: a calm place to start that trail, add to it as you go, and know it's ready whenever it's actually needed.