[BrandonM]

While it's possible that more breakups happen on Monday, I postulate that Monday is actually just the day that people are most likely to report a weekend breakup. People who break up aren't rushing to Facebook right away. A breakup can be a hugely emotional event. If it happens on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday morning, it is likely to be followed by spending a lot of time with family, very close friends, or generally being in denial. When Monday comes around, it's back to the daily grind, it's time to face reality, and telling everyone you know is one way to come to grips with the situation.

I would also argue that the pre-Christmas spike likely isn't because people are cheap. I think the main factor is that most people spend the holidays with family. Two possibilities come to mind: 1) one or both of the people in the relationship decide that the relationship is not worthwhile enough to take each other home to Mom and Dad, or 2) meeting the family over Thanksgiving leads to a breakup (it was awkward, the family didn't like the S.O., the S.O. didn't like the family, etc.).

All-in-all, I agree with the sentiment of several comments here that between the poorly-ripped image and the unjustified conclusions they jump to, the article is mostly crap.

[brianpan]

I don't think that's the conclusion anyone is drawing. Most other articles use the phrase "announced on Monday". The journalist in the TED talk scraped status updates for "break up" or "broken up". This isn't supposed to be taken as hard evidence of anything.

[BrandonM]

I don't think that's the conclusion anyone is drawing.

From the article: Mondays, as if they weren't bad enough, are the most likely day to break up.

I was referring specifically to the shoddy article and its crap conclusions, not to the original data. The original data was interesting and potentially insightful.