分手情未了:你會在社交網絡關注前任的一舉一動嗎?

Who hasn't logged onto Facebook and pored through an ex's page, looking at old posts and clicking on the photo of the girl or guy who took their place?

登陸Facebook上前任的主頁，查看那些舊日誌和他或她的新歡的照片，這事兒你也幹過吧？

If a new study is to be believed, the vast majority of people are guilty of post-breakup cyber-snooping.

如果一項最近的調查結果可信的話，大多數人會爲分手後依然在網上窺視前任的一舉一動而有罪惡感。

According to a Masters thesis written by a student at University of Western Ontario in Canada, as many as 88 per cent of people - nearly nine of ten - check up on their former boyfriends or girlfriends on the popular social media site, the Toronto Star reported.

據《多倫多明星報》報道，來自加拿大西安大略大學的一名學生在她的碩士論文中寫道，88%也就是將近90%的人，會在流行的社交媒體上繼續關注他們前任男女朋友的動態。

Jilted lovers signed on to friends' accounts to spy on the person who dumped them. They deleted photos reminding them of happier times, read long-forgotten wall posts and scrutinized their potential replacement.

失戀的人們借用朋友的賬號暗中監視那些甩掉他們的人。他們會刪掉那些讓人想起快樂舊時光的照片，重讀那些遺忘已久的日誌，並且密切關注對方可能的下一任。

‘It's so interesting right now, so different from before this technology existed. Once you broke up in the past, it was over,' media studies graduate student Veronika Lukacs, 25, told the Star after successfully defending her thesis titled ‘It's Complicated: Romantic breakups and their aftermath on Facebook.'

“自從社交媒體這項科技出現後，分手後的情況就和過去不同了，變得很有意思。在過去如果你們分手了，就意味着一切都結束了，” 這名25歲的傳媒專業研究生瓦倫尼卡-盧卡斯面對《多倫多明星報》採訪時這樣說。她已經成功結束了自己的論文答辯，她的論文題目爲《沒那麼簡單：情侶分手後在社交媒體上的表現》。

Lukacs said her analysis of Facebook as it relates to breakups has serious social implications. ‘Nearly everyone is participating in these behaviors, it's very very common,' she said.

盧卡斯說她之所以會分析Facebook是因爲它關係到情侶的分手，而這有着深遠的社交影響。“幾乎每個人都做過這樣的事情，這是一種非常非常普遍的現象”，她說。

The student also found that 48 per cent of people remain Facebook friends with their ex after they break up and 74 per cent had tried to keep tabs on their former partner's new flame.

盧卡斯還發現，48%的人和前任分手後在Facebook上依然保持好友關係，而74%的人會密切關注前任新歡的動向。

Of those who were no longer Facebook friends, 70 per cent admitted using a mutual friend's profile to check on their ex.

而對於那些分手後解除了Facebook好友關係的人，當中有70%承認他們會借用某個共同好友的賬號來查看前任的主頁。

'At the end of the day, Facebook does present very serious challenges for people getting over a breakup,' Lukacs said. 'It's a much more serious issue than a lot of people think.'

“最後表明，Facebook確實對人們度過分手時期的痛苦帶來了嚴峻的挑戰，”盧卡斯說。“這比很多人想象的更加嚴峻。”

Surveillance of someone on Facebook, or ‘creeping,' did not follow the patterns Lukacs had foreshadowed‘I had expected people who were not Facebook friends with their ex-partners would be less distressed.

在Facebook上監視或追蹤某人的行動，也並不都是按照盧卡斯預料的模式進行。“我原以爲那些和前任不再是Facebook好友的人會不那麼痛苦。”

‘We found the opposite was true. People who had 'unfriended' their partners had higher levels of distress. Based on interviewing people, I'm thinking that people who are the most distressed are the ones who delete their partners,' she explained.

“結果我們發現正好相反。那些和前任解除了好友關係的人反而更加痛苦。根據我們的調查訪問，我認爲最痛苦的就是那些把前任從好友中刪除的人，” 她解釋說。

Less surprisingly, the rejected partners who were most upset by the split were also the most avid stalkers.

不難想象，那些被前任甩掉、而且對於分手最傷心的人，也恰恰是最熱衷於在社交媒體上窺探前任舉動的人。

As part of her study, Lukacs surveyed 107 people over age 18 who had their heart broken in the previous 12 months. Three-quarters of them attended University of Western Ontario.

作爲研究的一部分，盧卡斯調查了107名年齡在18歲以上，且過去一年裏有過心痛的分手經歷的人，其中3/4就讀於西安大略大學。

‘A lot of people who I had interviewed talked about their surveillance behaviour and how they knew it wasn't good for them and yet somehow they were doing it anyway,' she said. ‘Rationality didn't play a role for them.'

“我訪問過的許多人都提到了自己在社交媒體上監視前任的行爲，他們明白這樣做對自己並無益處，但還是忍不住要去做，”盧卡斯說。“理性對他們完全不起作用。”

One man Lukacs interviewed confessed that he had hacked into his ex-girlfriend's Facebook account.

盧卡斯訪問過的一名男子承認，他曾經入侵過前女友的Facebook賬戶。

‘He never thought he was the kind of person who would do that. He was really embarrassed,' she said, adding that it is a good idea to change the Facebook password after a breakup.

“他之前從不認爲自己會是做這種事的人。他對此深感羞愧，”盧卡斯說。她還建議在分手後應該修改Facebook的賬戶密碼。

While deleting an ex from your friends list may seem like a viable solution to the problem, Lukacs said it is not entirely effective. In addition, it is generally considered rude to ‘unfriend' someone on Facebook, so many people are hesitant to sever that last tie.

儘管把前任從你的好友名單中刪除似乎是一個可行的解決辦法，但盧卡斯認爲這並不真的有效。此外，由於在Facebook上解除與某人的好友關係通常被視爲不禮貌的，許多人因此而猶豫，並不願切斷這個和前任最後的聯繫。