“Are You Going to Delete Me? Latent Profiles of Post-Relationship Breakup Social Media Use

and Emotional Distress,” details how people act after breakups through their use of technology. The authors conducted an experiment to see how social media users acted with their ex after their breakup; they classified individuals as either ritual cleansers, wistful reminiscers, implusivies, or clean breakers.

In the modern world, people tend to share their partners on social media or have evidence of them in some sort on their phone. It’s tempting to keep track of every move one’s ex makes because of how much information is easily accessible on the internet these days. However, depending on different circumstances and people’s personalities, people do different things post break-up in this modern world we are in. For example, “to gain closure, some delete SM content by untagging themselves or deleting posts or photos. Others remove all content post-breakup, often immediately, which may help them adjust. Still others abandon digital possessions rather than saving/deleting, perhaps because deleting is effortful and would not change the past.”

The authors surveyed individuals by asking them how much they interacted with their ex and their family/friends after the breakup and whether they deleted them off social media. Clean breakers barely interacted with their ex but were unlikely to have deleted ex. Whereas wistful reminiscers, did not do deleting but interacted with ex and/or ex family members. impulsives, deleted most of their ex on social media but interacted frequently with ex and ex’s friends/family. Ritual cleansers, they did not interact, and they deleted most of their ex’s social media presence.

It was interesting how the authors compared these categories to people’s attachment styles, which is rooted in psychology practices. For instance, people who are implusivies would be most likely to have insecure attachment styles as they had the most distress post relationship as they were unable to set boundaries; they wanted to remove all evidence of the relationship, but it was hard to resist the temptation of staying up to date with their ex. However, as the article brings up, more research needs to be done as it’s impossible to assume attachment styles through one break-up, different factors and circumstances go into how someone acts after a breakup.

Nonetheless, it would be interesting to see a comparison between the distress and psychological effects of breakups before the media and how people act now. Regarding people who use social media actively, it seems as if social media leads to people having more depression or mental health decrease after a breakup because of the easy access to keep track of an ex. I think social media has made break-ups and being able to move on harder, not easier. It would also be interesting to see research and studies done on why some people post their partners on social media and why others don’t; it would be compelling to see how social media does and does not affect those two scenarios.