Should You Get Rid of Online Evidence of Your Past Relationships?

Living online brings on a lot of stress. Keeping up with aesthetic trends and social pressures, posting enough but not too much, figuring out whether to follow someone or not, only to worry about why they never followed you back. It’s a lot to deal with, and although it sounds frivolous as hell when written down, these social media interactions can be a real anxiety driver. 

When you add a relationship – and then eventually a break-up – into the mix… things get even more complicated. 

One of the main social media dilemmas that comes up when a relationship ends is whether or not to delete all the evidence that you were with them that's floating around online. You might have posted anniversaries and birthdays to your Instagram, celebrating all your ex's best qualities that you don’t see anymore. You might have a Facebook relationship status to update if you’re a millennial who’s struggling to move on from 2015. You might have had a joint TikTok where you posted videos doing dumb stuff together that you thought you’d never want to forget about. There are so many ways that your ex can be embroiled in your digital footprint.

So when it ends, do you ditch it all, or nah?   

A VICE NZ poll of 150 people found that 59 per cent of respondents felt that you should get rid of online evidence of your past relationships. That left 41 per cent of people arguing against it. So while it might be ever so slightly more common to hit delete, there’s no obvious answer as to whether it’s right or wrong. In some ways, that’s reassuring: both answers make sense to someone. But the differing opinions also leave a lot of room for people to misunderstand each other. 

The biggest one: if your ex really hurt you, you probably don’t want to be reminded of them.

Unfortunately, plenty of people experience genuine harm from their relationships — it can vary from unintentional harm caused by carelessness or a mismatch of values, to harm caused by intentionally abusive and controlling behaviour. As Joe from Dunedin told VICE, “It’s case by case, but if the relationship was toxic [it helps].”

Even a good relationship can end in a bad break-up that exposes the nastier side of someone. Online evidence can be an unpleasant trigger when trying to heal from a bad relationship and a reminder of the pain you’ve been caused by an ex, so it makes sense that you’d want a social media scorched earth.  

You may just want to give your socials a refresh so that people know you’re now single. Deleting an ex's pictures from your Instagram, or videos from your TikTok, doesn’t always come from a malicious place – which is good to keep in mind if you ever end up on a past partner's social media account and wonder where all the pictures of yourself went. 

It’s well known that most of us use social media to lurk when we’re interested in someone, so it might give you peace of mind to get rid of your old pictures and make it clear you’re on the market. Missing out on your dream-girl because there’s still a “two years with this one” post about someone else on your IG is a tragic fate. But easily avoided if you can be bothered. 

Sometimes, there’s simply a need for a clean slate. If you’re lucky you might have no animosity with any of your exes, but that doesn’t mean you want your history together to be seen by anyone and everyone who’s looking. Clearing your socials of evidence of your past relationships doesn’t always come from an intense place of emotion, it might be as simple as preferring they weren’t there. 

“If it's something that’ll help you get through what you’re going through then it’s something you just need to do” Joe told VICE. 

As complicated as break-ups are, sometimes it takes a small change to make it all feel easier. 

There’s a fair argument that spending your time traipsing through your own Facebook page to whack-a-mole any rogue pictures of your ex partner is an unnecessary use of your time and energy. 

Keira* from Taranaki, who's on amicable terms with her ex although they don’t interact in real life, explained that it takes effort to go back and delete photos and posts, and it can “kind of make you think about it more.”

“I think it’s only worth it if you really really don’t want to be reminded of the person you were with,” she said. “Otherwise it’s a bit of a waste of your energy.”

Deleting everything also means you end up looking at everything. And taking the time to look through and relive the relationship through posts, pictures and videos might be more trouble than it’s worth. Unless you’re regularly prowling your own account history you’re not likely to see your old media anyway, so going back to delete it might just bring it to your attention and make things worse.  

If you’re sentimental, letting go of old posts might not even be a consideration. Why get rid of something that once made you happy and documents your past? It’s much easier if the relationship was a good one and if the break-up wasn’t Earth-shattering. But even our lesser relationships can be a part of who we are. 

“I’ve got quite a bad memory so [not deleting everything] helps me remember,” said self admitted photo-hoarder Brenna from Invercargill. “You learn something from each person and each relationship. Blanking it out doesn’t really do anyone any good.”

Anticipating regret might also stop you in your tracks. While it won’t be a problem for some people, acting out of a place of immediate anger or grief and irreversibly deleting everything might come back to bite you. So much of our lives are documented online, so do you really want to look back in your old age to find huge gaps where we’ve burnt someone out? 

All in all, there’s no “right way” of doing it. It’s important to remember that every break-up is unique to the people involved, and while we don’t always understand each other's decisions, it’s best for everyone to just accept them rather than pick them apart. Removing evidence of an ex online also doesn’t mean they’re gone for good as you may well have kept pictures on your own phone, and that’s okay too. 

Do what’s right for you and don’t let the decision overwhelm you. Social media isn’t real life and at the end of the day, the consequences aren’t that deep. The real focus is your health and happiness during what’s bound to be a difficult time. Keep your mind off your ex, don’t turn to over-analysing and scrutinising every action in the break-up and seek out the stuff that keeps you ticking.  

Oh, and maybe next time you date someone, don’t let your entire social media become a fan page for your partner. You’ll thank us later. 

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Rachel Barker is a writer / producer at VICE NZ in Aotearoa. You can find her @rachellydiab on IG and Letterboxd and see her film criticism on Youtube.