For peace of mind, remove your ex from your Facebook friends list. A study shows that remaining friends on social media led to more despair and longer recovery times for the emotionally distraught. After a breakup, monitoring the activity of the ex on Facebook proved to lead to as much stress as staying in personal contact with the ex. Consequently, the study suggest that the best way to move on after a breakup is to let go and move on.
Key Takeaways:
- Strictly speaking, surveillance behavior would be defined as actively looking through an ex-partner’s Facebook profile, whereas simply remaining Facebook friends would not necessarily mean actively looking for information regarding an ex-partner on Facebook.
- Marshall’s study (2012) suggests that Facebook surveillance of a former partner may have a greater effect on post break-up functioning than strong-tie contact (offline). So why is this the case? It was speculated that Facebook provides information not readily available offline, such as an ex-partner’s involvement with someone else.
- All in all then, it seems that remaining Facebook friends with an ex-partner may help rather than hinder emotional recovery following a romantic relationship breakup.
“All in all then, it seems that remaining Facebook friends with an ex-partner may help rather than hinder emotional recovery following a romantic relationship breakup.”