Facebook won't let you forget your ex, can make 'moving on' difficult

New York: Even though photos of your ex on Facebook can be deleted
with just a click, the proliferation of social networking sites has
made forgetting after a break-up a bigger chore, a new study has
found.
"People are keeping huge collections of digital possessions," said
Steve Whittaker, a psychology professor at UC Santa Cruz who
specialises in human-computer interaction.
"There has been little exploration of the negative role of digital
possessions when people want to forget aspects of their lives," said
Whittaker.
Whittaker and co-author Corina Sas, of Lancaster University, examined
the challenges of digital possessions and their disposal after a
romantic breakup.
Digital possessions, include photos, messages, music, and video stored
across multiple devices such as computers, tablets, phones, and
cameras, researchers said.
Their pervasiveness "creates problems during a breakup, as people
'inhabit' their digital space where photos and music constantly remind
them about their prior relationship."
In interviews with 24 young people between the ages of 19 and 34,
Whittaker and Sas found that digital possessions after a breakup are
often evocative and upsetting, leading to distinct disposal
strategies.
Twelve of the subjects were deleters, eight were keepers, and four
others were selective disposers.
Some of the heartbroken may want to forget but are "extremely
resistant to actual deletion," Whittaker and Sas found, most often the
"dumpees." Others later regret disposing of everything.
Disposal is made more difficult today because "digital possessions are
in vast collections spread across multiple devices, applications,
web-services, and platforms," they said.
"When the relationship is good, this promotes a rich digital life. But
when it sours... people have to systematically cull collections across
multiple digital spaces," researchers said.
Facebook photos can be untagged but not deleted if posted by someone
else. "It's time consuming and emotionally taxing because people tend
to re-engage with possessions, especially photos," they note.
Some of the initial tactics encountered were: changing one's
relationship status to "single," immediately unfriending or blocking
ex-partner's access to ones' profile.
The study appears in the conference proceedings.
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