The Philippine Online Chronicles

Faced with the harrowing ordeal of having to break up with a boyfriend or girlfriend, more and more people are deciding to take the fast, easy, and impersonal route: digital dumping.

A poll of 2,000 people conducted by DatetheUK, a leading online dating service based in the United Kingdom, showed that while 38 percent of those surveyed still preferred to end relationships with a face-to-face conversation, more than half of the respondents admitted to using e-mail or social networking web sites to call it quits with their partners.

Of these, over a third (34 percent) said they had broken up via e-mail, 13 percent had simply changed their relationship status on Facebook to "Single" without informing their significant others, and six percent unilaterally announced their breakup on Twitter.

Sean Wood, the marketing manager for DateTheUK, predicted that digital dumping would soon take over when it comes to ending a relationship. "It's often easier, quicker and avoids any misunderstandings," he said.

The rest of those polled chose to split up over the telephone (eight percent) or through a mobile text message (two percent).

Interestingly, according to the results of an international survey on mobile phone use conducted by global marketing research firm Synovate last year, 12 percent of the respondents had broken up with someone and eight percent had been dumped via text message. Regarding bad news in general, 35 percent said that they had hidden behind text to indicate refusal or to send a difficult message, led by 49 percent of Filipinos, 48 percent of Malaysians, and 47 percent of Singaporeans.

Text messaging is an extremely popular method of communication in the Philippines, which has been hailed as the text messaging capital of the world.

The Synovate study covered 8,000 mobile phone users in 11 different markets, including Canada, Denmark, France, Malaysia, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, the US, and the UK. The findings were released in September 2009.