Breaking up is not so hard to do
Count on apps if you don’t mind taking it impersonally
One in 5 adults from 25 to 34 have used online dating tools to find lovers, according to Pew Research Center. Many have used technology to abandon one.
Technology lets us dodge all sorts of things we don’t want to do ourselves — say, cooking dinner or doing laundry. Its latest frontier, though, is more ambitious: streamlining the breakup.
Apps now offer on-demand prompts to help you craft the perfect breakup text message. Websites walk you through a step-by-step how-to. If that’s still too confrontational, a new startup will handle all that messy work — for a price.
Even social media giants are creating options that allow users to navigate a world in which ending a relationship is no longer a private affair, but one done in public view and archived forever.
Jordan Laird and Ian Greenhill, the creators of an app called Binder, were surprised when their breakup tool recorded 6,000 downloads on its first day — even though it was meant as a joke.
Laird and Greenhill said they thought of the app — billed as the opposite of Tinder — while riffing on the idea that if you can swipe right to get into a relationship, you should be able to swipe right to get out of one.
“It’s time they got the message,” the app’s slogan read.
One in 5 adults from 25 to 34 have used online dating tools to find potential lovers, according to Pew Research Center. Many have certainly used technology to abandon one.
Text messaging, though widely viewed as one of the least acceptable ways to break up with someone, is also among the most common, at least among teens. Twenty-seven percent of teens surveyed in a Pew study have broken up with someone via text. Phone calls, once considered a more conscientious way of breaking up, are used just marginally more often at 29 percent.
In November, two brothers started a business called
the Breakup Shop that will use these tools and break up with someone on your behalf. It is not a joke.
The business offers e-mail ($10), text messages ($10), official-looking typed letters ($20) and old-fashioned phone calls ($29) to break the news to a soon-to-be ex. They offer customizable features, including attaching a photo of you with your new significant other, “if it’s that kind of breakup,” or sending a farewell bouquet of flowers.
“It’s time to move on,” the standard message reads. “While you’re likely quite shocked and understandably saddened by this news, we just know that you’ll be back on your feet in no time.”
Larger companies are working to make digital breakups less harsh. Thanks to Facebook posts and Instagram “usies” (selfies featuring a couple), social media can be full of land mines for those looking to get back on their feet, ex- perts say.
“Continued exposure to one’s ex-partner through Facebook may disrupt the process of healing from a prior relationship,” according to a University of Miami study on how Facebook can affect a post-breakup recovery.
Valentine’s Day is one of the most active days of the year on Facebook — and one of the most common for people to announce that they’re engaged. It can be a particularly painful time for the recently rebuked.
Enter Facebook’s new “Take a Break” function, which was quietly introduced in late November
The tool was created to allow people getting over romantic relationships to control how much they see of their ex, while allowing them to remain “friends” on the social network.
When users change their Facebook relationship status, they will be asked if they want to implement Take a Break.
“Breakups can be something where you need a little bit of distance to recover,” said Kelly Winter, who leads Facebook’s product management team focused on creating a “more thoughtful experience” for its users. “But people often want to stay friends with their former partners. The problem was when they would stay friends and feel like they couldn’t get a break from that person.”
Users can even update old photos with the click of a button, untagging themselves from memories they would rather not see on their own page anymore.
Newly single people tend to use Facebook more than three times as much as they did right before a breakup, according to Facebook research on what happens “when love goes awry.” This shows that that newly single people are perhaps seeking support from their friends or wallowing in the ruins of a recently ended relationship.
A 2012 survey of 100 adults between 18 and 35 by the University of Western Ontario showed that 88 percent of them admitted that they used Facebook to check on their ex after a breakup, and 64 percent said they reread old Facebook communications — such as messages and wall posts — from their ex.
Facebook’s flashback feature, On This Day, may complicate things further if a particular Valentine’s Day memory creeps up out of nowhere on a holiday already difficult for many singles.
Users whose breakup was Facebook-official may be covered — Facebook spokeswoman Chelsea Kohler said the company takes “breakups into account in many of our products that incorporate nostalgia and memories. For example, we do not include photos with exes in Your Year in Review, On This Day, and others.”
Facebook users can also prevent any and all Valentine’s Day memo- ries from cropping up uninvited by adjusting their preferences. And if the relationship dissolved in real life and not on Facebook, users can manually change their settings to prevent awkward digital encounters by searching “how can I take a break from someone?”
And if all else fails, the company said, there’s always the good old fashioned “unfriend” button.