Relationships used to end with a conversation and then, mostly, silence. Now they end and then continue in a low-grade way through likes, story views, mutual friends' posts, and the occasional accidental (or not-so-accidental) reappearance in each other's notifications. This extended digital half-life makes it measurably harder to fully move on, because closure keeps getting quietly reopened.
Social media also introduces conflict that didn't exist in earlier eras of dating: jealousy over who a partner follows or likes, arguments about what counts as “posting enough” about the relationship, and the strange modern anxiety of interpreting someone's public activity status as a coded message. None of this is really about the platforms themselves — it's ordinary insecurity and miscommunication, just with a new surface to play out on.
After a breakup, the healthiest practical step is usually the simplest and least fun one: mute or unfollow, at least temporarily. Constant visibility into an ex's life — who they're with, how happy they look, what they're doing without you — makes the grieving process longer and more painful, and it rarely provides the clarity people hope it will.
Digital distance isn't petty or dramatic. It's a reasonable boundary that gives an ending a chance to actually be an ending, instead of a wound you reopen every time you open an app.