Facebook Knows all About your Love Life

Recently Facebook celebrated one billion users logging in, the largest amount ever on a single day. So you wouldn’t be wrong in thinking that with so many members, Facebook has a lot of data about its users, myself included – after all it has an entire data science division dedicated to interesting information!

You interact on Facebook like no other way in your life

After all, you wouldn’t tell someone in the street that you’ve cleaned the house this morning, hung the washing out and had a bacon sandwich for breakfast would you? But we do exactly that on Facebook. We share exciting news, sad news, and even when we’re going on holiday. We also share things about our relationships. ..

So what does it know?

In 2014, Facebook did a number of studies around the topic of love. Many of the results weren’t a big surprise but not all were obvious - here are some things Facebook has learned from looking at your relationship status…

The age difference between same-sex couples is larger

This may not come as a surprise - in relationships between men and women the man tends to be older (by an average of 2.4 years) however, the same can’t be said for same sex couples who tend to have a larger age gap, reaching an average of 8 or 9 years.

People break up in the summer

So you've both changed your statuses and made it official. How long is it likely to stay that way? Facebook found that the biggest predictor of how likely you are to stay together is how long you've been together already. For each month, that passes the probability of breaking up decreases - not so surprising.

Summer seems to be the time for breakups and perhaps the extra-large spike in 2011 is due to the economy?

A suddenly ‘single’ status can really kick start your Facebook interactions

The data science team looked at people "who were on the receiving end of a separation"—they had been in a relationship for at least four weeks when their partner switched their relationship status to "Single." The number of interactions, including messages, posts, and comments received, showed a big spike on the day of separation, followed by an overall increased level of interaction that lasted for weeks afterwards.

Facebook friends may not be the same thing as real-world friends, but they sure can come through for you when you need them.

Read more about when Facebook become a step and why it's not ok to use your phone on a date - updating your status is no exception!

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