Facebook Makes Breaking Up Much Harder to Do
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LOIC VENANCE/AFP/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — Have you checked in on what your ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend is up to on Facebook before? Well, it turns out you’re not alone.
Just about everybody involved in a break-up has looked into the activities of their former significant other, according to a Master thesis written by Western University researcher Veronika Lukacs.
In her study entitled “It’s Complicated: Romantic breakups and their aftermath on Facebook,” Lukacs found that 88 percent of the respondents admitted to creeping on their exes.
But the post-relationship stalking doesn’t stop there. Close to 75 percent say they also take a gander at the Facebook pages of their exes’ new squeezes.
This obsessive behavior apparently includes other forms of creeping, as seven in ten will use a mutual friend’s profile or log in as a mutual friend to creep on a former boyfriend or girlfriend.
Close to two-thirds acknowledge reading or analyzing old messages, while half are upset enough to delete photos of their ex from their Facebook profiles.
Just over 30 percent will post pictures to try and make their exes jealous, and a third cop to posting a song lyric or quote about their old love interest as their status.
Ultimately, only 8 percent of creepers stay friends with their exes on the social networking site.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio