Everyday, the role that social media plays in our lives grows. Millennials have become obsessed with broadcasting almost every aspect of our lives. There is no doubt that social media has led to this generation’s obsession with documenting major and minor moments in our lives. People post everything from a picture to celebrate their dog’s birthday to a long status update about their disgust toward Congress’s lack of gun control laws.
One of the most popular topics that people post about are their relationships. Whether it’s a #WCW on Instagram, or a long drawn out happy anniversary post, people love to boast their relationships via social media. For many, a Facebook post featuring your significant other is a milestone. They believe that becoming “Facebook official” is quite the landmark in their relationship. While couples may be frequent posters while together together, post-break up I’ve noticed that some people sweep their profiles clean of their now ex-significant other. All pictures, videos, everything, on all platforms— gone.
Social media has become a way for Millennials to create a digital representation of their lives. However, unlike real life, on social media you can delete all traces of certain life events. The ability we now wheeled to remove all documentation of an event is very powerful, but is it something we should take advantage of it? After all, both Taylor Swift and Calvin Harris both deleted any proof of their relationship from their respective profiles after they broke up.
Of the Occidental College students I surveyed, 53 percent said that they believed it was acceptable for a person to delete all remnants of their significant other if doing so helped them cope with the breakup. However, 18 percent did not agree with the process altogether, arguing that one cannot delete the past. Many people had more nuanced responses saying that deleting profile pictures is understandable, but all traces is too much. Personally, I have never tried to delete a person from my social media presence, but I do wonder if it is therapeutic. Has the deletion of people from your profile become the new age way of cutting their faces out of photographs?
This topic is probably something that has never crossed most people’s minds, but after noticing that a friend of mine had deleted all traces of her ex-boyfriend, I was perplexed. I knew the details of this relationship; it ended very amicably, so why go through the trouble?
The people who tend to do this are very social media active meaning they post very often. Therefor, if their relationship was long, like my friend’s, they could have countless hours of scouring their profiles for all traces of their ex. How much time are people willing to invest in this?
I am completely empathetic and understanding to anyone who has suffered any kind of emotional or physical abuse from a relationship and understand that this process can help them recover. However, for those who are just spiteful of their ex, I must ask, is it worth it? That is a lot of effort to put into spite.
Now, my friend who deleted her ex-boyfriend from her profile is in a new, very social media present, relationship. Being the pessimist that I am, I grew worried that she had been pressured into deleting her past relationship. I hoped this was just a fear of mine, but my survey revealed that it unfortunately was not. A write-in response said that traces of the old significant other must be deleted “out of respect” for the new one. This is very problematic. Social media should never be a way for one person to control another’s behavior. In this day and age, with the importance that social media usage weighs on individuals, that is a form of abuse.
Millennials are the first generation to have control of how the world sees them. How we use that power is telling of what we choose to forget. However, our ability to delete seems to have spoiled us into thinking that what we post on the Internet is reversible. What we post on social media is supposed to reflect our lives, but how much should it reflect the parts that we want to forget as well?
