Not heard of a digital will? A digital will is an inventory of your digital assets. It can form part of a normal will or be a side letter. It is really important to have a note of all the passwords that your loved ones will need to access documents you have created and online accounts you have; also for them to be able to use your social media to let people know you have died, and even to find the location of precious photos and documents that might be required.
You can create a document with passwords listed but this isn’t very secure. You could create it, password protect it and just give your lasting power of attorney/s and / or executors the password. Or you could print it out and tell them where you have hidden it. If you have a password locker then you can nominate someone who, in the event of an emergency or loss of life, will get access. For the one I use, they don’t have to have an account themselves at the point of nomination, but to get access they will need to have an account. This really is the most secure way of handing your passwords over to someone else.
To access your loved one’s social media you may very well need to have the password. Some social media accounts have a legacy option (like Facebook), but you need to nominate someone to be the legacy contact in order to do that. Instagram doesn’t have this option, but you can apply to memorialise or remove the account. LinkedIn works like Instagram in this way. So with the latter two, you can do this with a death certificate and don’t need to have the password, unless you wanted to put a final few posts up for contacts to see.
It might be annoying gathering everything together but it will save so much time for your loved ones when they are grieving, so it is a very kind thing for you to do for them. We wholeheartedly recommend spending time doing this.