Facebook try and make breaking up a little bit easier…

Going through a break-up with someone is never easy. But with the advent of Facebook, it’s now often a whole lot messier.

Unless you take the “drastic” action of completely unfriending them or blocking them, you’re only a few clicks of a mouse from knowing what is going on in their lives, where they’re going out, who is tagging them and who they’re being photographed with. It’s enough to drive any ex-partner crazy.

But of course Facebook “stalking” isn’t healthy, and whilst many don’t really want to do it, it’s just too convenient an opportunity to pass up. And Facebook don’t want people breaking connections on their site since that is, basically, bad for business.

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Enter the new break-up feature, that allows those Facebook users who are ending their “In a Relationship” status to limit their visibility with each other on the site to prevent that post-break-up anguish.

So how does the break-up feature work? When you tell Facebook that you are ending your relationship by changing your relationship status, Facebook asks you if you’d like to limit what your ex-partner can see about you, such as photos you’re tagged in, posts you make and places where you check-in, all without having to unfriend them on Facebook.

A screenshot of some of the features users are presented with after a break up

That in itself is useful but nothing that couldn’t already be achieved with the pre-existing “Lists” feature that allows you to assign your friends to various lists that can each have custom privacy settings.

What is potentially useful is the ability to limit the visibility of your ex-partners posts from yourself. In other words, a way to bypass the temptation of checking up on them (unless of course Facebook provide an easy way to “reverse” your choice, in which case the option has limited use.)

Of course the big upside of this is you won’t see their posts pop up unexpectedly on your newsfeed and they won’t see yours either. They won’t be included as a “suggested tag” and you even have the choice of untagging photos of you and your ex or just limiting their visibility so they won’t pop up when you don’t expect it.

The feature is currently only available to mobile users in the United States before a potential worldwide roll-out.

What do you think? Could this be a useful feature? Let us know below.