December a popular time for relationship break-ups

Oct 30, 2010 by Dirk Singer

Some potential bad news for anyone whose relationship is on the rocks – with Christmas coming up, you may be single very soon.

User interface designer Mathias Mikkelsen has pulled out  some stats unveiled at TED on the beauty of data visualisations.

One was about how Facebook status updates can be used to predict when people break up.    The start of Spring, April Fool’s Day (that’s harsh) and the start of the Summer holiday were peak break-up times.    However, two weeks before Christmas the break-ups reach a peak, with Christmas Day being the least likely day for you to get dumped.

And oh, apparently Mondays are days when relationship status updates gets changed.   I’m assuming that’s because the deed is often done at the weekend, which is then reflected at the start of the week.