True, but what if something were to happen to you or your wife? Would you want to remove their social media accounts?
If "ifs" and "buts" were bolts and nuts.... you know how it goes. Those things are not important. If somebody's spouse passes away closing his or her facebook page should be #3334567 on their list. Sharing your personal passwords with let's say your lawyer or friend is stupid. Seems like you're making a big deal out of nothing. I agree some passwords should be shared between the spouses (such is your and your spouse's bank account password). But that's common sense, there's nothing unusual about that. Other than that I find your questions irrelevant. Not trying to be rude here, just want to bring common sense back to where it belongs.
I'm sure my question isn't "irrelevant" to these people: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16801154 Parents, in particular have found it a near impossible task to gain access to the accounts of their children who have passed away. Like you, not everyone thinks it is important, but to many it is. Is making out a will irrelevant? As we move into the digital age, people need to take things like this into account.
If a person is no more, Facebook deals with it this way - https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/228813257197480. I guess there's NO way to access a deceased person's account. The ONLY option is to delete it or let it be as it is. At least so appears to be the case with social media.
Then let's talk about parenting. Parents who play "friends" with their kids are lousy parents. A parent has an authority to gain access to anything their kids are doing. It's not a matter of "can they?" it's a matter of "they definitely should". Over there in the UK it seems like they have created a generation of kids who act like total brats and now the society is trying to pacify / appease them by citing some polls. All a parent should do is he/she should tell their 12-13 year old: "Hey you, what is your password I need to log into your account to see what you're doing". You're mixing lousy parenting traits with whether or not we should share our personal passwords with our friends. I don't get it.
You are completely missing the point of the objective. Parenting skills has nothing to do with the point of the survey... there are parents of people in their 30's who have faced this problem - nothing to do with "kids who act like brats". I've noticed you run a classified ad's site... If anything were to happen to you, would all your passwords to the site (hosting etc..) be lost also? What would happen to your business? My point is; that we do not take into account what problems we leave behind for others to face by not thinking about these things. There needs to be a system that people will trust where information can be stored. This isn't just exclusively for social media accounts... it could be anything from banking, paypal to ftp hosting passwords.
eBay doesn't matter once you're dead, unless you die with an open transaction. Bank accounts get handled by your lawyers so your spouse doesn't need actually need that. Your domains will be cancelled when the renewal either doesn't happen or the credit card payment for auto-renewal is declined. Same with the hosting account. If you want your sites to live on then you'd want to give the relevant details to your spouse - even if it's just phone numbers of the service providers. There's a certain closure to having notification in forums where someone has been active. @Blogmaster went MIA years ago and was eventually tracked down. @samantha pia and @Spoiltdiva have both MIA and while it's ok if they've just moved on we care enough to wish them well.
Done, never thought about what would happen with my (social/mail) accounts when I wouldn't be there anymore. Depending on the situation it can be important to have a (back-up) plan for when something happens to you.