Selena Gomez Breaks Up With The Jenners

BREAKING NEWS! Well, it was a few days ago anyways. Earlier this week Perez Hilton reported that Selena Gomez unfollowed her besties Kylie and Kendall Jenner on Instagram. And to throw salt in the wound, she also got rid of their selfie shots together. OUCH. This is exactly how it goes down in most relationships that end badly, so algo serio must have happened. It got me thinking about the mentality of unfollowing on social media. Because it’s definitely a thing now. It’s a statement with purpose.

Whenever I have an amiga who’s relationship is on the rocks–or completely over–they always come to me asking, “should I unfollow him on Twitter & Insta and unfriend him on Facebook?” My answer is almost always, YES. Many people would argue that this is immature and unnecessary. I say there’s just no way around it.

Social media allows everyone to show who they want the world to see them as, and oftentimes after a breakup or fallout (this can happen with friends too) it’s used as a tool to hurt the other half of the broken relationship. If you’re broken hearted, or just hurt, swiping up and down a feed full of subliminal messages via memes, gifs, photos, or just words, will only cause more heartache.

Everyone’s fear is always that the unfollowee will think less of you when they realize you are no longer keeping tabs on their every public move. The thing is, the act of unfollowing isn’t about them or what they think, it’s about you. The real purpose of moving forward on this is to give yourself peace of mind and actual space to move on. With the constant suffocation of knowing what they’re up to, the time you’re suppose to spend healing is actually spent pining over their posts. You’ll overthink the meaning of their every social media move and suddenly you’re not in a relationship with them, but you are with their feed. In the end, you’re the only one losing and with every subtweet they post, you’re practically getting broken up with over and over again.

I’ve deleted/unfollowed a guy and friend or two. Did I ever regret it? Nope. Why? Because I got to move along with my life and not have to be an outsider watching theirs play out without me. So if Miss Gomez had a falling out with her gal pals and decided to excommunicate them from her social media life, I say, do it boo! And if you need to do the same with tu ex novio, I’ll back you up.