Friday Poll: Do you track your exes on Facebook?
A survey uncovers that 88 percent of people queried have followed their exes on Facebook. Are you the stalking type or the ignoring type?
I'm feeling a little left out of the Facebook experience. I'm friends with some of my exes on the social-networking megasite, but I don't hover around their profiles, watching their every social-media move. I may be in the minority on this.
Western University master's candidate Veronika Lukacs conducted a study to see how people respond to breakups using Facebook. Her survey respondents were people who had gone through breakups within the last year. She that found 88 percent of them, in her words, "creeped" their exes around on Facebook.
Some jilted lovers take a more extreme approach to stalking. The survey found that 70 percent used a mutual friend's profile to do their creeping and 74 percent checked out the profile for their ex's new love interest or suspected new love interest.
Facebook makes it a lot easier to peek in on the lives of former lovers, but Lukacs noted a corresponding rise in feelings of distress among the creepers based on how much Facebook stalking they were doing.
Some respondents, 31 percent, channeled their energies into posting photos designed to make their ex jealous, leading me to imagine those people posing with attractive people, skydiving, or partying at popular clubs.
The 88 percent figure sounds like a startlingly high number, so we're going to take our own unofficial survey. Do you track your exes on Facebook? Vote in the poll and fess up to your Facebook ((or Google+ or Twitter or Pinterest) habits in the comments.