My grandmother started throwing away photos of people she no longer recognized as dementia set in. No one was aware of this until it was way too late.

I don't have many pictures from my childhood. My grandparents took a couple of videos, but I doubt those VHS tapes survive.

One part of my wife's family lost basically everything in a tsunami. They managed to find two mostly-recognizable pictures, so even a box meant to be passed down isn't going to survive disaster.

I have a box of photos to scan, but I've never managed to get the scanner settings dialed in to where things look right to me and aren't gigantic files. I suppose it's OK, though; my family line dies with me so there's no one on to whom to pass them anyway.