McDaniel et al. in, “Are You Going to Delete Me? Latent Profiles of Post-Relationship Breakup Social Media Use and Emotional Distress” argue that break-ups can have a significant impact on how people use social media.
The 256 participants were broken down into three primary groups: clean breakers, reminiscers, and cleansers; of these groups, the distribution was 61.3%, 12.9%, and 15.6%, respectively. The composition of the group was broken down quite well by skin color, income, relationship status(dating, engaged, married), cheating status, and cohabitation. From here, factors like posting, liking, commenting, tagging, and dm-ing were all analyzed and then the results were drawn. The results can be summed up best by the following, “Emotional distress was significantly correlated with all the SM behaviors (r = 0.22–0.56, p’s < 0.001), although associations appeared larger for monitoring/interacting with the ex-partner (r = 0.55–0.56, p’s < 0.001).”
The results from this study fall in line with what I would have expected. Most people have a difficult time with breakups and in today’s world, breakups are very public thanks to social media. In fact, social media seems to be just as big a part of certain lives as physical interaction, so if people aren’t going to be seen in public together, then it makes sense that they wouldn’t want to be seen together online.
If I could add something to this study, I think it would be interesting to see the analysis on either duration of the relationship, or whether or not it was the persons first relationship because I think those often have a significant impact on how people act after a breakup.
Zach, your post explained the article well and I agree with your point that the results align with what I would have expected. I also think it would be interesting to compare the length of the relationship to if someone deletes their ex-partner on social media or not. To add onto your points, I think it would be interesting to see if people are more or less likely to delete their ex-partner on social media if they also see them in person (i.e. if you go to the same school or work together). If a digital platform is the only place that you encounter your ex-partner, would someone be more or less likely to remove them from their friends list?
I like your point that if adding something, whether or not it was the persons first relationship matters. I also like Megan’s idea that if people need to see their ex-partner in daily life. Different situations definitely would lead to different decisions. Overall, I think this study is very interesting, and the result may benefit researchers, educators, and practitioners to further study topics such as health, wellness, and communication. This topic exists because people’s use of digital communication increase to a great extent in this age.
I love your analysis of this study. I think our generation is very used to the drama that social media causes in relationships. In many cases, I see girls blocking their ex’s but then unblocking them and it turns into a toxic cycle post-breakup.