After more than a decade of usage, social media have become a virtual environment where meaningful content is created and kept, highlighting its potential to become part of personal digital archives. This study investigates users’ attitudes and preservation practices related to digital memories created on social media. Survey findings highlighted how users seem to consider these items as meaningful digital traces to document important events of their lives, and a potential inherent part of their personal archives. However, results show how this attitude does not seem to be supported by adequate preservation strategies. After analysing social media platforms’ policies in relation to users’ preservation practices, we advocate for raising more awareness among both users and service providers regarding the risks posed by the ephemerality of the digital world and the need for specific provisions that go beyond the short-term retention of data and look to the future and potential use of what appears to be considered an inherent part of individuals’ personal archives.

经过十多年的使用，社交媒体已成为创建和保存有意义内容的虚拟环境，凸显了其成为个人数字档案一部分的潜力。本研究调查了用户对在社交媒体上创建的数字记忆的态度和保存实践。调查结果强调了用户似乎如何将这些项目视为有意义的数字痕迹，以记录他们生活中的重要事件，以及他们个人档案的潜在固有部分。然而，结果表明，这种态度似乎并没有得到充分的保护策略的支持。在分析了社交媒体平台有关用户保存实践的政策后，