Maybe you’ve experienced it before: You break up with someone, but remain friends on Facebook. Months later, you notice they are “liking” all your posts and photos — and it’s clear they are closely watching what you do online. Or, maybe you are the one using Facebook to keep tabs on your ex.
This is a behavior known among psychologists as interpersonal electronic surveillance (IES) or, more commonly, “Facebook stalking.” New research in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking titled “Romantic Partner Monitoring after Breakups: Attachment, Dependence, Distress, and Post-Dissolution Online Surveillance via Social Networking Sites” investigated what makes a person more likely to be a so-called “Facebook stalker.”
The study, conducted by Jesse Fox of Ohio State University and Robert S. Tokunaga of the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, found that individuals who were most distressed by a breakup were the most likely to monitor their ex-partners on the social networking site Facebook.
The research was based on 150 male and 281 female Facebook users aged 18–42 years who had experienced a breakup in the past year.
Those who reported greater commitment to their former relationship tended to report higher levels of emotional distress after the breakup, “which in turn predicted surveillance both immediately after the breakup and currently,” the researchers said.
The relationship between distress and surveillance was stronger for individuals who attributed the breakup to their partner, and individuals who “Facebook stalked” their former partner immediately after the breakup were more likely to say they were still monitoring their partner online.
“In the wake of termination, it is not uncommon for ex-partners to remain ‘friends’ on Facebook,” the researchers said. “This lingering connection—as well as access to the ex-partner’s post-breakup experiences via Facebook posts and pictures—may encourage more surveillance of the partner, particularly in the wake of a stressful breakup.”
Previous research suggests that monitoring former partners on social networking sites like Facebook makes it more difficult to emotionally recover from a breakup. Fox and Tokunaga suggest that “individuals experiencing a high level of distress from a breakup should consider disconnecting from the ex-partner on SNSs, either temporarily or permanently.”
