Study offers picture of love in the digital age

Two-fifths (42 per cent) would “unfriend” their ex-boyfriend or girlfriend within a month of a split, while almost a third (31 per cent) said they would extend the cull and remove all online contact with their ex-partner’s friends and family, according to the study.

Behavioural experts said the findings showed young people were now using social media as “decisive means” to confirm the end of a relationship.

But the YouGov poll of more than 2,000 adults aged 18 to 34 also found nearly a fifth (17 per cent) thought it was acceptable to “stalk” a former partner’s social media page to check if they were in a new relationship.

Two in three (65 per cent) said they would flaunt their new unattached status by changing their Facebook profile to “single” within the first month of a break-up, while one in five (18 per cent) would change their status to “in a relationship” if they found someone new in the same period.

Psychologist Professor Craig Jackson, from Birmingham City University, said of the research: “These findings confirm what many psychologists have suspected about those who have grown up surrounded by social media; that they fall in “digital love” quickly – that is, to provide online confirmation and validation of a new relationship.

“But are just as capable of falling out of it quickly too, and with some clinical precision.”