Facebook Offers to Ease the Pain of Breaking Up

(Wall Street Journal)Facebook was built to bring people together. Now it wants to help people break up.

The company Thursday began testing ways to help users avoid their exes on the social network. The new tools allow users to go beyond unfollowing someone – but stop short of the more drastic unfriending or blocking.

Facebook said the initiative was part of its ongoing effort to help users navigate tricky and difficult moments in their lives.

In a paper published earlier this year, researchers from the University of Miami found that college students prone to melancholy tended to spend a lot of time on Facebook after a breakup, which hurt their chances for recovery.

The tools will be available to users who change their status to indicate they are no longer in a relationship, Facebook said in a blog post. Those features are being tested on mobile devices in the U.S.

The features allow you to “see less of a former partner’s name and profile picture around Facebook without having to unfriend or block them,” Facebook said in the blog post. Their posts won’t appear in your news feed and their name won’t be suggested when you tag friends in a photo. Facebook will also allow users to edit and remove tags from past posts with their exes.

“We hope these tools will help people end relationships on Facebook with greater ease, comfort and sense of control,” Facebook said in its blog post.