Nearly 90 per cent jilted lovers stalk their ex on Facebook

Research from the University of Western Ontario found that 88 per cent of people stalk their exes on Facebook after a breakup while a whopping seventy per cent used a friend's account to keep track of their ex secretly after deleting them on Facebook, a Canadian website reported.

The study surveyed 107 people over 18 years of age who had experienced a breakup in the previous 12 months. Three-quarters of them were Western students.

Sixty-four per cent agreed they reread or overanalysed old messages or wall posts from their ex while 50 per cent deleted pictures of ex-partners.

33 per cent changed their Facebook status to quote a song or lyric about the ex-partner and 31 per cent posted a picture in an attempt to make the ex jealous.

"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 student Veronika Lukacs who conducted the research was quoted as saying by Toronto Star.

"I had expected people who were not Facebook friends with their ex-partners would be less distressed. 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," Lukacs added.

The dumped partners who were most upset were also the most avid stalkers and the dumpers were the least upset.

"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. Rationality didn't play a role for them," she said.