Study: Facebook Cheating is Just as Awful as Any Other Kind

Oh, man - cheating. Whether it's in real life, online, in the sun, in the shade, or on the top of Ludacris's escalade, it sucks balls to be cheated on. 

And unfortunately, among the many things we can thank the Internet for - Seamless Web, online shopping, Lil Bub - are the myriad new ways to cheat (emotionally or physically) on your partner. Not only can creeps take to OK Cupid to pretend to be single, but ex-girlfriends or boyfriends are readily available on social networks like Facebook. 

Whether or not reconnecting with an old ex or establishing contact with someone new actually becomes physical, the significant others of "Facebook cheaters" go through the same stages of sadness and betrayal you'd find in any other form of cheating.

A team of researchers at Texas Tech University found this out over the course of their study this year, Facebook Infidelity: When Poking Becomes Problematic, one of the first of its kind to look at Facebook cheating as opposed to other forms of infidelity (via Psychology Today. In fact, in many cases, Facebook cheating was dragged out even longer-thanks to password protection, Facebook messages are easy to keep a secret until someone gets sloppy and forgets to sign out.

And even when it's discovered, often it's hard to determine whether it's harmless flirting or more before confronting the person about it.

Sucks.