This Valentine’s Day, expect a greater number of singles on the prowl — at least according to the often unreliable world of incessant Facebook relationship status updates.

Last year, more than 40 per cent of Facebook users around the world changed their online relationship status to “single,” while only 29.2 per cent switched to “in a relationship,” according to data released by the social media site earlier this year.

The numbers, culled from Facebook’s data bank by its own researchers, speak to a long-held desire by users to publicize their commitments. But the data may also reinforce a growing trend among social media users to broadcast their singlehood as a way of attracting potential mates, said Jen Kirsch, a relationship expert on CosmoTV’s Love Trap.

“Instead of paying for online dating, (Facebook’s) a good way to show 1,000-plus friends of yours that you’re single,” Kirsch said.

Still, Facebook relationship statuses are sometimes shifty and undependable, said Ilana Gershon, an Indiana University anthropologist and expert on breakups in the social media age.

In researching her 2012 book The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting Over New Media, Gershon interviewed dozens of college-age adults and found Facebook users often posted “fake statuses” or set up “joking relationships.”

“I have plenty of stories of people who were married to their best friend’s dog,” Gershon said in an interview.

That, she said, would make it difficult to assess the new data at face value. Moreover, users may report they are “in a relationship” when, in fact, they’re married or engaged.

Others, however, stress Facebook statuses can, in fact, help determine how people see and treat their own offline romantic lives.

“People who post a ‘Single’ relationship status on Facebook have more sexual partners between relationships than those who opt out of posting ‘Single’ on their profile,” Gretchen Kelmer, a couples therapist at the University of Denver’s Center for Marital and Family Studies, wrote in a recent blog post in the New York Times. “(Her research) also found that people who disclose that they are ‘In a Relationship’ on Facebook also report being more committed to that relationship.”

The new data shows nearly 16 per cent of users said they were “married” or “engaged;” 0.6 per cent said they were “divorced” and 0.7 per cent said they were “widowed.”