User Experience of Breakups on Social Media

In this study, we collected posts/comments and articles from Reddit, Quora, Google and Facebook using keyword search method to explore how social media users experience post-breakup in the current digital age.

Users mainly use unfriend/block features provided by social media platforms to disconnect with ex-partners. However, social media users expect to have more features to support their apart behavior. In addition, people often experience apart behaviors on social media as social dilemmas due to mutual connetions with exs and digital materials owned by ex-partners.

We proposed two design insights for social media platforms:

• A "One-click" feature could help users to remove all traces;
• A private mode of posts related to ex-partners is needed.

This study is published and was presented at CSCW 2020: Breakups on Social Media: Social Behaviors and Dilemmas (CSCW 2020, poster)