Hi everyone!
So, over the Valentine's Day weekend, Professor Chiang posted about an article on Twitter that talks about different studies conducted by Facebook about people's love lives. These studies are based on the relationship statuses of Facebook users all over the country.
Facebook was able to tell us things like which city has the most couples, the most single people, where single women most outweigh single men, and where single men most outweigh single women. These studies were also able to tell us things like "about half of all Facebook relationships that have survived three months are likely to survive to four years or longer." They also tell us that the times of the year that see the most breakups are between May and July, as well as in February (due to Valentine's Day??)
These are some crazy facts when you really think about it.. that Facebook can really know what's going on in people's love lives! Although everyone who puts the information out there is aware that they are putting it out on the internet, I'm sure it doesn't cross people's minds to think that something as simple as changing their relationship status back to "single" or "in a relationship" will be used as data in such studies.
I know for myself this is something pretty strange to wrap my head around knowing that I, myself am labeled as being in a relationship on Facebook. It really makes me wonder how much of my activity has played a part in these types of studies.
For more information on these studies, take a look at the full article:
http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/13/5408968/facebook-relationships-singles-data
-Kathleen
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