Following a scientific study  Suzanne Duffy from Cambridge University’s The Cambridge Student questions why we feel it’s OK to lose friends in cyberspace:

I would say that there are two kinds of reasons to un-friend someone on Facebook. The first is the slow-burner: a friend has been posting increasingly annoying memes, making constant supposedly enigmatic references to an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend, and the sheer volume of their statuses has becomes too much to bear. With a sigh, as if accepting the inevitable, we delete them as a friend. The second is the in-a-fit-of-temper un-friending. Filled with rage on breaking up with someone, or finding out exactly which ‘friend’ has been stealing our milk from the communal kitchen, we delete them swiftly and without mercy. Both kinds of unfriending are an exercise of power. With a click of a button, we can change our social circle.

Fortunately, Cambridge academics have put an end to my speculation by recently publishing a study attempting to establish more scientifically why Facebook friendships break down. They found some interesting figures in relation to age and gender. For instance, the bigger the age gap between two friends, the more likely their online relationship is to break down. In addition the researchers said: “We also found that a relationship with a common female friend is more robust than that with a common male friend.”

Full story here.