A study from Western University shows lurking an ex-partner on social media can actually be bad for your health.
The study says that looking at the Facebook page of someone you used to date can "yield alarming levels of distress following a breakup."
Veronkia Lukacs and Anabel Quan-Haase are enrolled in Information and Media Studies at Western. The two published "Romantic breakups of Facebook: new scales for studying post-breakup behaviours, digital distress and surveillance."
They say there are three key aspects of Facebook that contribute to breakup stress; an ex-partner's profile, the posted relationships status and shared digital histories of the relationship.
In the study, 88% of participants report "creeping" their ex following a breakup, 62% said they were asked about their online "relationship status" change in real life, 64% said they re-read or over-analyzed old messages or posts, while 51% said they deleted pictures of them together.
The two conducted the research because they say while there are a lot of studies focused on the benefits of social connectivity, little is known about how networking sites complicate breakups.