Their social media keeps showing their birthday

First, stop the reminder that is coming

You do not have to wait for the next birthday notification. Most platforms let you control what you see, even before you touch the account itself.

• Turn off notifications from that person's profile on your own account, so their posts and birthday prompts stop appearing in your feed.
• If the account is still active and you can get in, edit or hide the birthday on the profile. Removing the date stops the prompt for everyone.
• If you cannot get in, use the platform's memorial or reporting route described below. A memorialized account usually stops sending birthday reminders.

Do the one that is fastest for you today. The rest can follow in the coming weeks.

Decide what you want the account to become

There are usually two paths, and they lead to different places. One keeps the profile as a place for friends to remember. The other removes it. Think about what your family would find comforting, and talk it through with the people closest to them.

A memorial setting typically freezes the account. Friends can still see old posts and leave tributes, but nobody can log in, and the profile is marked as remembering someone. Closing the account removes the profile and its content. Some platforms offer a download of the person's posts before anything is removed, so ask for that if you want to keep the photos and messages.

You do not have to decide everything at once. Many families leave the profile up for a while and close it later, once the first hard months have passed.

What a family can usually ask for

Platforms handle this differently, and their forms and rules change. Check the company's current help page for the exact steps rather than relying on what you remember. In general, though, you will be asked for the same kinds of things.

• Proof that the person has died, often a copy of the death certificate. You can order several copies at once, which saves a second round later.
• Proof that you are family or the person handling the estate, such as your ID and your relationship to them.
• A clear request: memorialize the account, close it, or remove a specific post.
• A request for a copy of the account's content, if the platform offers one.

Keep a short note of what you sent, to whom and when. If you have to follow up, that record makes the second message much easier.

Some platforms let the person set this up in advance, naming someone to look after the account. That is worth knowing for your own accounts, and it is one reason to write your wishes down. Our guide to legacy contacts explains how that works.

If you have the password

Logging in can feel like the quickest fix, and sometimes it is. You can hide the birthday, change the email on the account, or download the photos. Be careful about posting as the person, though. Friends may find it confusing, and it can upset people who did not know you had access.

If you are not sure whether logging in is the right move, the platform's memorial route is the cleaner one. It tells the company what happened and puts the account in a settled state.

The birthday is not the only reminder

Anniversary prompts, tagged photos, and memories that resurface can arrive the same way. Once you have dealt with the birthday, look at the settings that control reminders and memories on your own account. You can usually pause or hide them for a person, or turn the feature off for a while.

If their phone is still active, birthday alerts may also be coming from the calendar or contacts there. Our guide to a locked phone after a death covers what to do when you cannot get in.

What can wait

Closing every account this week is not necessary. The profile will not go anywhere. Give yourself room to decide, and let other family members say what they would like.

What is worth doing soon is the small set of things that keep arriving: the birthday prompt, the tagged photos, the messages from people who have not heard. Quiet those first. The rest can follow when you have the energy.

When you are ready to look at the wider list, our checklist walks through the accounts and papers families usually handle, in a sensible order.

For your own accounts

If you are reading this while putting your own affairs in order, you can spare your family this exact moment. Write down which accounts you have, what you would like done with each, and where the login details are kept. Name someone you trust to carry it out.

SuddenGone keeps that in a sealed envelope on your own device, handed over only when it should be. You can read more about what it covers and how a family makes a claim when the time comes.