In “Are You Going to Delete Me? Latent Profiles of Post-Relationship Breakup Social Media Use and Emotional Distress”, Brandon McDaniel, Michelle Drouin, Jayson Dibble, Adam Galovan, and Madison Merritt examined post-breakup behaviors including monitoring, interacting, deleting posts/photos, deleting the former partner, deleting the partner’s family/friends, stopping social media use, and keeping digital possessions. They identified four latent classes of breakup SM behaviors, and examined associations between the class and breakup emotional distress.

Authors examined post-breakup behaviors associated with mental health and post-breakup adjustment, and assigned 256 participants into four classes, which are clean breakers, wistful reminiscers, ritual cleansers, and impulsives. The study can be described as reliable since the participants are somehow diverse, and 186 participants who failed attention checks or did not provide a valid survey completion were removed to ensure data quality. “Researchers determine the appropriate number of classes based on the fit statistics and substantive interpretation”. A manual BCH three-steps procedure was applied in the following process.

A conclusion is that emotional distress was significantly correlated with all the social media behaviors. Researchers controlled for characteristics that might contribute to post-breakup distress such as whether partner cheated or who initiated the breakup, there were still significant differences by class in emotional distress, suggesting the classes are meaningful. How individuals process their relationship history on social media affects distress independent of situational factors, and that worth further research.