I&#x27;m guessing with high likelihood that the people who are complaining about this feature are probably the people who don&#x27;t even use Facebook.<p>Sometimes you break up with someone and even though you don&#x27;t want to see anything related to them in the near, that doesn&#x27;t mean you don&#x27;t want to still be friends. Immediately you would just rather not see any updates from your ex and also not have to deal with the social aspects of having to unfriend&#x2F;block your ex.<p>Unfriending them causes problems later on when you decide you&#x27;re OK with being friends and also causes problems with your friends asking why you&#x27;re no longer friends with that other person (the breakup was that bad huh?). No it wasn&#x27;t but there was no other way to immediately not have to deal with that emotional aspect of a breakup.<p>Also unfriending someone does not prevent photos or other people tagging your ex from showing up, unless you _block_ the ex. Then now you are required to further explain why you unfriended and blocked your ex.<p>&quot;Oh, Janice broke up with Tom and then unfriended him? And blocked him? Cold-hearted bitch.&quot;
&quot;What&#x27;s that? Alex broke it off with Jill and then unfriended her? Then blocked her? What an asshole!&quot;<p>So there is more to deal with that an unfriend would exacerbate.<p>The comment about &quot;engineering&quot; people to be terrible at handling interpersonal relationships is... a weird way to consider this new feature. The generation before Facebook most people just didn&#x27;t go outside or didn&#x27;t pick up their phone to avoid dealing with the issues you face on a social network. But I do not see how either aspect is making people better or worse. Breakups suck, people were never really good at dealing with them.