People find love on Fool’s Day, says Facebook

According to a new study by Facebook, the days people usually find love on are Valentine’s Day, Christmas, and well... April Fool’s Day too!

According to a new study by Facebook, the days people usually find love on are Valentine’s Day, Christmas, and well... April Fool’s Day too! By tracking the relationship status changes made by users on their profiles, members of the study concluded that relationships are influenced by seasons, holidays and even the days of the week.

“Using US Facebook data from 2010 and 2011, we looked at how different times of the year affect the beginning and ending of relationships,” said Jackson Gorham and Andrew T Fiore, members of Facebook’s Data Team. “We tabulated the changes from a non-coupled relationship status, like ‘Single’ or ‘Divorced’, to a coupled status, like ‘In a relationship’ or ‘Engaged’. We compared that figure against the number of changes in the other direction, from coupled to non-coupled, to calculate the net percentage change.”

The fifth biggest day for a net increase in relationships was April 1st, or April Fool’s Day, which saw 20% more relationship initiations than splits. But unsurprisingly, many of these appear to be short-lived: April 2nd was the year’s most extreme day in the other direction, with 11%. According to the study, people on Facebook were more likely to start a relationship after the weekend, and break up towards the end of the week.