Let’s Make It “Facebook Official”

Destined to last forever, or destined to bite the dust?

The test of time is no longer the only way to figure out if your significant other is the one for you. Facebook recently released information claiming that they can accurately predict how long a “Facebook official” relationship will last.

Statistically tracking relationships through social media doesn’t sit well with some students.

“It’s an ethical issue to predict how long something human will last through a computer,” said Ruben Helmstadter, music.

How is this even possible?

With people willingly publicizing personal information on social networking sites, Facebook has the capacity to track down data from users around the world and predict if they’re in a fling or in a long-term commitment using the very same data put out by its users.

The data concluded that a couple who has been official on Facebook for at least three months is likely to be in that relationship for several years to come, the Huffington Post reports.

The testing was done on couples that are not married and are over the age of 23 years old.

Facebook’s ability to predict how long relationships can last shows just how much this generation’s interactions thrive on social networks.

Some students at PCC agreed that becoming “Facebook official” is a new level of establishment for the relationship.

“It’s like another step of commitment. Dating, Facebook official, engaged, married,” said Patrick Castillo, political science. “Of course, like everything else it has pros and cons. Pros being that you want to work things out and stick through the relationship because it’s gone public, cons being that Facebook always stirs drama.”

Other students agreed that there are definitely positive and negative aspects to going “Facebook official.”

“It lets other people know that you’re together and prevents them from trying to hit on your significant other,” said Karen Lara, sociology. But other than that, there is no real significance to having a Facebook official relationship.”

On the other hand, some students did not agree that making a relationship “Facebook official” helps with commitment.

“In my point of view, if you have a Facebook part of the reason is too look for new people to date, so making your relationship official on social networks doesn’t really prevent anyone from hitting on your partner or on you,” said Fernanda Corvantes, undecided. “It’s pointless.”

Nevertheless, CBS News stated that researchers can figure out who you’re dating based off of hints from your Facebook profile, regardless if you publicize it or not.

Researchers discovered a new form of measurement called dispersion, which CBS stated was defined as “the extent to which two people’s mutual friends are not themselves well-connected.” The research basically concludes that couples with less mutual friends are more likely to stay together.

Also, even when the relationship status of the individuals have been removed from their profiles, researchers searched over 8.6 billion links, and using an algorithm, were able to correctly identify the individuals’ significant other 60% of the time, according to CBS News.

With people constantly revealing things about themselves on numerous types of social media, it is interesting to see what future researchers are going to be able to predict based off of similar data analysis.