As they say, breaking up is hard to do, but in the digital age, it's hard and complicated. Do you tell your former flame that it's over in person, or text them, or change your Facebook status and let them get the hint?

Who knows, but at least someone's doing the research to find out when people are breaking up, if not how.

From Mashable:

A very interesting data visualization from infographic wizard David McCandless is making its way around the web, depicting the most common times a year that people break up — via Facebook (Facebook) status updates.

McCandless whipped out the chart during a TED talk this past summer. Apparently, he and his team scraped 10,000 status updates for the phrases “break up” and “broken up,” and made the following discoveries: 1). A ton of people break up before social occasions like Spring Break and the summer, 2). Mondays aren’t just the start of the work week — there’re the end of many a relationship, 3). People have the decency not to dump their significant others on Christmas Day.

If you feel your relationship is on the rocks, you probably can rest easy for awhile, but when Spring Break rolls around, you might want to stock up on tissues.