Facebook, Is there Anything it Can’t Do?

Facebook has started to *creep* into every aspect of our lives. Some of us tell it everything. And so, of course, it can tell us a lot about our romantic lives. Data Analyst David McCandless realized Facebook’s potential to show us patterns in our online dating behavior, so he paired up with an information expert and they looked at 10,000 random Facebook users who had recently used the word “break up” or “broken up” on their profiles. (Apparently, these were users who didn’t care too much about privacy).

A definite pattern emerged from their analysis of the data. People, it seems, are much more likely to break up right before Spring Break, right before Summer Break, or, often, on a Monday. The first two are for obvious reasons (summer and spring break are obviously for sexy singles), but why Monday?

My guess? The weekend is when that last drunken blowout/ jealous fight at the bar or sense of suffocation occurs, provoking the Monday break-up. Mondays are also about new beginnings and serious decisions.

Christmas Day had the fewest number of splits (duh!), but in the days leading up to Christmas, break-up activity increased (It’s the gifts, I tell you – we are all a bunch of cheap bastards.)

When thinking about these results, however, we might want to keep another recent study in mind – one which found that people who spend more than an hour a day on Facebook tend to be narcissistic and suffer from low self-esteem. Narcissim, low self-esteem – these are traits that don’t exactly foster healthy relationships. These findings then, should be taken with a grain of salt. Umm, also: get off Facebook! If anything, get on to the online personals instead!