When it comes to moving on from a breakup, the advice is familiar: Spend time with friends, pick up a new hobby, take care of yourself. But according to new research from McMaster University, there is another powerful step people often overlook: Stop looking at your ex on social media.
A new paper by social psychologist Tara Marshall, an associate professor in the Department of Health, Aging & Society, offers some of the clearest evidence yet that social media exposure to an ex-partner can meaningfully slow emotional recovery after a breakup.
“There does seem to be something uniquely unpleasant about social media exposure. When people see their ex online, it really amplifies jealousy and negative emotion in a way that just thinking about an ex doesn’t,” says Marshall.
This project builds on Marshall’s earlier research from 2012, when she published one of the first studies linking Facebook “surveillance” of an ex to poorer breakup recovery.
That study showed an association, but it didn’t establish cause and effect: Were people distressed because they checked their ex’s profile, or were distressed people simply checking more?
“It remained ambiguous. I wanted to follow up with stronger methods, across more platforms and with designs that could tease apart cause and effect,” Marshall says, adding that the rise of Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok, and the shift away from Facebook among younger adults, gave her new reasons to revisit the issue.
This new research draws on data from four complementary studies that included nearly 800 participants. Some had gone through a breakup just weeks earlier, while others were up to two years out from the end of their relationship, yet the pattern was the same.
Drawing on long-term surveys, daily diary tracking and an experiment, Marshall found that seeing an ex on social media reliably increases emotional pain. Whether participants stumbled across an ex in an Instagram story or deliberately searched their profile, they experienced spikes in sadness, jealousy and breakup distress.
Across the studies, the most damaging behaviour was active checking or deliberately seeking out an ex’s posts, photos or profile information.
“When people deliberately sought out their ex, they felt worse not just that day but the next day too. It creates what I call a ‘next day emotional hangover.’ It triggers memories, rumination and a whole cascade of negative feelings that carry over,” she explains.
Simply seeing an ex appear in your feed, or passive exposure, was also linked to worse mood, but the effects were typically limited to the same day.
Participants reacted most strongly to photos of an ex looking good, having fun, or appearing to move on, even when there was no sign of a new partner.
The effects were especially pronounced for people high in anxious attachment, a style characterized by fear of rejection and heightened sensitivity to relationship loss.
“Social media is full of carefully curated images. People post the moments where they look happy, confident and like they’re moving on,” she says.
That can be incredibly painful to see after a breakup. It fuels jealousy in a way that in-person encounters often don’t.”
Many people still follow or are connected to an ex online through mutual friends, old photos, algorithmic content or shared circles long after a relationship ends.
“All it takes is one Instagram story or a tagged photo to bring everything flooding back,” she says.
Her advice is to limit contact with an ex on social media – both what you see of them and what they can see of you.
“Muting, unfollowing or even taking a short break from social media altogether can really help, especially in the first few months when emotions are most intense,” she says.
Distraction is also an effective tool.
While breakups can be an intense time, for many people they are also a catalyst for change, Marshall says.
“It takes time, but many eventually reach a place where they understand what they want in future relationships and what they won’t tolerate. Limiting social media exposure helps people get there more quickly.”