Relationship status: ‘It’s complicated’

The first thing on my girlfriend’s list of things to do once she got married?

Change her Facebook status.

And I don’t mean after her honeymoon. She updated her status as soon as she left the altar. She was still in her wedding dress.

It’s interesting how often — and how much — we broadcast our personal lives across the very public networks of social media.

As soon as people get engaged or break up or get married — or now, get divorced — they change their relationship status on Facebook as a way to tell the world, “Hey! Look! See what just happened!”

I get that you want to publish accurate and up-to-date information online. I’m a journalist, I can respect that. And I even get the need to broadcast to people in your network that you’re engaged or married.

But break-ups? In Facebook? On Twitter? That just seems, well, tacky.

I witnessed the awkward break-up of a couple on Twitter once. It started by one person “unfollowing” the other. And all hell broke loose.

And I’ve heard from friend who say their new significant others urged — if not outright pestered and pressured — them to change their Facebook status immediately. If not, that meant they were hiding the relationship, they didn’t really love them, they weren’t committed — and that led to an entire night of useless arguing.

There are more than 800 million active Facebook users, most of whom indicate some kind of relationship status, which can now range from single to in a domestic partnership.

And there’s even an app — the Facebook Breakup Notifier, which was released in February — that helps people keep taps on potential partners. You can choose the friends whose relationship status you’d like to track. (Like old boyfriends, recent flings, that crush you had in high school.) And when his relationship status changes to “single,” you pounce.

“You like someone. They’re in a relationship. Be the first to know when they’re out of it,” promises the app’s website.

It’s a weird world we live in. Can anyone explain it to me?

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