'Holiday bragging photos' are main reason people get hidden on Facebook

88% people admitted hiding friends' holidays posts because they felt jealous

(Getty istock)

If you have found yourself rapidly loosing Facebook friends since the general election was announced, it is probably because they hold different political views to you.

New research by travel company Sunshine revealed the top reasons for people unfriending people on the social networking site after asking more than 2000 Britons why they had removed people as friends on Facebook so far in 2017.

The majority of participants (28 per cent) said they had removed friends over differing political views. The next four highest reasons were mainly personal with almost a quarter (24 per cent) removing a contact because they had fallen out, 16 per cent removing someone if they had drifted apart and five per cent removing an ex-partner. Additionally, 10 per cent removed someone because they suddenly realised they didn’t actually know the person in real life.

In recent years, Facebook brought in a tool meaning you didn’t necessarily have to completely cull someone from your network but can instead just choose to hide their posts so you never have to see anything you’re doing.

The main reason someone chose to ‘hide’ someone but not remove them was due to jealousy, according to the survey, with 21 per cent hiding posts and photos which showed people “bragging” about their holidays. When asked why they had hidden the posts, 88 per cent said this was because it sparked the green monster within.

Other people that came victim to be hidden were people who shared “cryptic needy posts” (19 per cent) and oversharers of personal information (10 per cent).

Vanity also doesn’t get you very far on Facebook as 15 per cent of participants said they had hidden someone because they upload too many selfies.