The trusty block button comes with a whole host of stereotypes: it’s the companion of the psycho ex-boyfriend or even the insecure new girlfriend. But, why do we instantly block when we want to remove someone from our lives? Psych-She explores the many reasons why we do it, and how it might actually be your internet bestie.
When it comes to blocking people online, some of us can and some of us can’t. Some of us do it almost absent-mindedly, with a shrug of the shoulders and a roll of the eyes, while others sit over-thinking whether we actually want to commit to not being able to stalk their profile ever again.
Blocking feels like the final stage of removing someone from your life. It might be an ex, and they may have been cut off physically but their presence is still lingering in the form of story views, or outrageous insta posts showing them living their ‘best lives’.
It might be an ex-best friend who is reposting TikTok’s about friends being around for a ‘reason, season or for life’, and you know full well they are the reason the pair of you are no longer in contact.
It gets to a point where we decide enough is enough and they need to go, but somehow, making the decision to block them feels more severe than ending the relationship in the first place.
A study published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication explains that blocking is ‘usually influenced by the norms and expectations of the social groups’ that we are part of. We’ve all had that one friend pressuring us to block The Ex and The Girl He Cheated With to protect our own sanity and stop us from spending hours upon hours stalking their profiles.
Usually, they’re right. One of the biggest reasons we use the block button is as a protection tactic- it’s hurting us too much to see their face plastered on our screens.
21-year-old Connie recently underwent a breakup, and was blocked by her ex-boyfriend on all platforms of social media. At first, she was offended, and saw the act as a complete attack but she suddenly managed to turn this on its head.
“I saw that I was blocked on practically every form of social media, including Twitter and TikTok.
“I was really offended at first, but then I saw him stalking my insta stories on his fitness account, where he was catfishing his followers, and I was getting notifications on the daily to tell me that he’d been viewing my LinkedIn profile, so I feel like he was doing it to stop himself from checking up on my every move.
“It obviously failed.”
So why does it feel like such a personal attack to be on the recieving end? Surely it would help us heal if we knew that the blocker actually doesn’t hate us, but had reached their final straw and couldn’t stand to see what we were up to any longer.
Sometimes people will block as a power move. For example, you’ve had the final say in an argument and their ego is hurt, so what’s the next best thing that’s going to shoot their ego down a bit more? Hitting that block button.
Imogen, a 21-year-old student, blocked a man she met at the gym and after he sent her an abusive voice-note on Whatsapp.
“I was quite interested in him and the day he sent the voice note, we had made plans but I hadn’t heard from him for days prior so I just assumed we weren’t seeing eachother anymore”, she said.
“His excuse was that he’s not a big texter, but he was posting away on his Instagram story.
“He rang me to ask if I was ready and I obviously wasn’t, so I cancelled the plans with him and he sent me a verbally abusive voice note. He manipulated me into thinking I’d done wrong, and he was swearing and attacking my character, so I blocked him and that was the end of it.”
It comes from a somewhat victim mentality; often, a man will dissapoint you and manipulate you into thinking that you’re the problem, and they will still find a way to play the victim card.
It can also be an act of avoidance. We may block someone so that we don’t have to deal with a confrontation, or we may not have initially blocked The Ex after the breakup, but have decided to after deciding to soft-launch a new love interest on our insta story.
People use their social media profiles as a catalogue of their ‘best bits’, showcasing what they’ve been up to and who they are doing it with, obviously leaving out all the shit parts that wouldn’t appeal to someone in the midst of their daily social scrolls.
This allows social media to have our mental health in a chokehold. Research published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology in 2023 explains that there is a relationship between social media and feelings of depression and lonliness.
This seems easy to believe, as we’ve all clicked onto Instagram to see photo dumps of our unemployed friend travelling the world, or a couple doing all the sickly couple activities that we wish we were doing.
If you’re trying to get over a breakup, there’s no way The Ex is posting anything on social media other than snippets that would give the illusion that they are thriving without you, so the bottom line is that they’re not posting anything worth seeing.
Sometimes, blocking someone is as blunt as it feels. We may be getting some unwanted attention over Insta DM, or we actually have just had enough of seeing someone’s posts for no apparent reason. Blocking them is the perfect way to show them that we’re not interested- surely they have to get the message if they physically can’t reach you.
Coming back to the ‘social norms’ thing, if someone tells us they’re being bothered online, we don’t even need to think twice before we’re uttering the words ‘just block them!’.
It might feel like a harsh action at the time, but the block button can actually be your best friend, so use it as and when you need it and don’t give it a second thought.
