Research has officially confirmed what we all subconsciously knew to be true: that we rely on Facebook (META) to confirm our break-ups because we’re too cripplingly insecure to break things off for good in the physical world.
According to the Belfast Telegraph, nobody really means it when they say they “still want to stay friends” with an ex, at least when it comes to Facebook.
Out of 2,000 participants polled in a behavioral study—all between the ages of 18 and 34—42 percent said they’d unfriend an ex within a month of breaking up, and 31 percent said they’d even sever connections with their ex’s friends and family. 65 percent would change their relationship status to “single” within a month of a break-up. Additionally, 34 percent said they’d delete all images of themselves and their ex on social media following a breakup, which really just sounds like an unnecessary amount of work, if you ask us.
Some unnamed “behavioral experts” said the findings showed young people were now using social media as “decisive means” to confirm the end of a relationship, the Telegraph reported.
“These findings confirm what many psychologists have suspected about those who have grown up surrounded by social media; that they fall in “digital love” quickly – that is, to provide online confirmation and validation of a new relationship,” said Birmingham City University’s Craig Jackson, a psychology professor, “But [they] are just as capable of falling out of it quickly too.”
But don’t worry if you haven’t unfriended your ex, and, in fact, still spend upwards of four hours per day tracking his or her every move on Instagram. A cool 17 percent of people polled “thought it was acceptable to ‘stalk’ a former partner’s social media page to check if they were in a new relationship,” meaning it’s completely okay that you’re a total creep.
