The lifetime of solid state storage revolves around the rate of degradation of the storage structure and that depends on usage; there is a limit to how many times you can turn a bit on or off. This number is increasing all the time and for normal users and computers is sufficiently large as to be ignored.

"Enterprise" standard solid state discs now routinely have 5 year warranty and they get hit at a far higher rate that anything we will throw at them.

You are still going to get failures, **** happens, but I am not aware that modern SSDs are any more prone to failure than mechanical hard discs.

I'd advise your photographer friend that use of CDs or DVDs for long term storage is not any more secure, they degrade over time even when sat on a shelf. This can be mitigate by controlling temperate and humidity - bit I'd feel just as happy with a decent brand USB or SSD device.