Breaking up is hard to do, especially with Facebook as the main source for friends to keep up on who’s dating whom.
Everyone with a relationship status on Facebook knows it’s a pain when it ends. A non-stop slew of comments asking what happened and if you’re OK is the last thing you want to deal with after a breakup.
Throughout 2008, 10,000 Facebook breakups were recorded and graphed by writer David McCandless. The results showed the most common times and days that breakups occurred.
The pattern he found follows a college academic schedule. The most common time to break up was spring break, probably because people don’t want to go on vacation to Mexico with their boyfriend or girlfriend, and a close second was right before summer and winter break started. I can only assume that if you weren’t serious with someone you obviously wouldn’t want to buy that person a gift for the holidays.
The study also observed Monday as the most common weekday for a breakup. Maybe Monday’s are a good day to breakup because it’s commonly thought of as the worst day of the week. People are grumpy because they have to wake up early for school or work, which possibly adds stress and causes more fights between couples.
The only problem with McCandless’ graph is that you have to take into account those annoying couples that break up and get back together every single week. He also should have dropped any numbers from April Fools’ Day, because even though some breakups are real that day most people try to fool everyone by breaking up or getting engaged.
Time magazine’s website reported that Facebook estimates 60 percent of users have either “single” or “married” as their status. “It’s complicated” and “open relationship” are rarely seen. And probably for good reason too. Your friends don’t need to know if you are having problems in your relationship. We don’t really care, and it’s actually immature to disclose your personal information.
According to Mashable.com, Facebook conducted a study that measured the amount of positive and negative words used in status updates over the course of one week and actually found that people who don’t disclose their relationship are actually 50 percent more negative than everyone else.
The graph of breakups showed that late December and early January aren’t peak times for breakups. When I removed my relationship status almost three years ago it was because having it was causing so much drama with my ex, and I was sick of our friends calling and commenting on it. As long as two people know they are together, why does it matter if all your Facebook friends know or not?
If you are sick of your friends getting into your relationship business, then remove your Facebook relationship. As long as you and your boyfriend or girlfriend are happy, it shouldn’t matter that you are “Facebook official.”
E-mail Lindsey at lskupfer@asu.edu
