If you have strong political opinions about the 2016 presidential race, you might soon find your friend count dropping. The election is finally approaching. Tensions are high. Name-calling is rampant. Negative ads are everywhere. The nation is deeply polarized between Hillary Clinton supporters, Donald Trump diehards, and everyone else in between.
Several media outlets are warning about a specific social media phenomenon: election-related unfriending. It is not subtle. It is not quiet.
Take the case of Brent Blackaby. He is a business consultant. He is also a Democrat. Politico reported that he severed ties with his Republican uncle. The argument involved numerous relatives. It spilled over from private chats into public feeds.
Blackaby made his position clear to his network.
“OK, if any of my Facebook friends are still voting for Donald Trump, do me a favor and unfriend me now.”
This sort of digital conflict isn’t new. You might remember the 2012 election. A Pew Research Center study from that time found that nine percent of social media users had blocked, unfriended, or unfollowed someone. They did it because of online comments they disagreed with. Or found offensive.
Liberals took offense more often. Twenty-eight percent said they dropped friends due to politics. Conservatives were at sixteen percent. Moderates sat at fourteen percent.
Is there a bigger wave of unfriending this year than in 2012 or 2008? The Trump and Clinton campaigns arouse raw feelings. The stakes feel higher. But there is no way to know for sure.
Unfriending is difficult to track in real time. It happens silently. Sometimes the person being dropped doesn’t even know immediately. Facebook itself admits ignorance on the matter.
Andy Stone, a policy communications official at Facebook, responded to queries directly.
“Unfortunately, we do not have the data you’re seeking. However, I can tell you that between January 1 and October 1 of this year, 109 million people on Facebook in the US generated 5.3 billion likes, posts, comments and shares related to the election.”
The volume is massive. The engagement is unprecedented. But the personal cost? That is happening one click at a time.
The Psychology of Unfriending During Political Crises
“We really don’t know the answer,” admits Jenny Stromer-Galley. She is an associate professor at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies. She studies how people use social media during campaigns. Her point is simple. We have more qualitative data than quantitative data. We know why hard feelings happen. We just lack the exact numbers to measure the scale.
Previous research shows a clear pattern. People consume online content that reinforces what they already believe. They join communities that agree with them. This makes them strident. It also makes them vulnerable. Anger spikes when someone bashes their candidate.
“When you have strong Clinton supporters… being exposed to people who hate Clinton, that can produce anxiety,” Stromer-Galley says.
The polarization gets worse. We start treating the other side as bad guys. We stop seeing them as people with different opinions.
Unfriending Trends and Political Polarization
A 2014 study by Nicholas John, a communications professor at Hebrew University, looked at Jewish Israeli Facebook users. The study focused on rates of unfriending during an armed conflict in Gaza that summer. The results were stark. One in six users unfriended or unfollowed someone during that period. One in twelve cut off as many as three former friends.
Younger Israelis were more likely to end friendships on Facebook. Older users were less likely to do so. Political leanings mattered too. The further left or right a user was, the more they dropped friends.
Here is the surprising part. The actual impact of the conflict didn’t drive these decisions. Facebook users in southern Israel faced the highest threat of rocket fire. They were no more likely to unfriend people than users in safer parts of the country.
“The conflicts didn’t have much to do with the actual impact of events on a person.”
One factor reducing unfriending rates is that the country was already polarized. An August 2016 Pew study highlighted this divide. Only a quarter of Trump supporters have close friends who support Clinton. Only 18 percent of Clinton backers are close to people voting for Trump.
Thirty-one percent of Trump supporters have no close friends on the opposite side. That number jumps to 47 percent for Clinton supporters. The social fabric is tearing.
The Emotional Cost of Digital Rejection
For those who get dropped, the emotional impact varies. It depends on the circumstances. A study in Computers in Human Behavior explored this. Researchers found something interesting about cold shoulders.
People spent more time thinking about the slight. They felt more negative emotions. This happened when they believed the rejection was “Facebook-related.” It had nothing to do with a real-world incident. Digital rejection stings differently. It leaves you wondering if it was personal or just platform noise.
The line between online anger and offline reality is blurring. We treat digital spaces as extensions of our political identities. When those identities are challenged, we cut ties. Not because of what happened in the street. But because of what happened in the feed.
Does it matter? The anxiety is real. The polarization is exacerbated. We are left with fewer friends who disagree with us. And more anxiety about those who do.
