Ariana Grande and Ethan Slater have broken up

Question

The claim that "Ariana Grande and Ethan Slater have broken up" is misleading. 

There is no factual evidence stating whether or not the couple has split. According to Cosmopolitan, Rumors circulated after an alleged inside told The Daily Mail, "Ariana and Ethan have been on and off for most of this year." He chose not to attend the MTV VMAs with her because they'd had an argument just days before. But they made up soon after. They've both been running hot and cold with each other." However, Cosmopolitan notes that Ariana and Ethan aren't too public about their relationship They do not walk the red carpet together or are caught by the paparazzi, so it's hard to determine if Ethan's absence from the VMAs is proof of a breakup. In fact, Slater later congratulated Ariana Grande's win for the VMA's Video of the Year award on his Instagram story. Just days after when being interviewed at the Gen V season 2 premiere, he spoke briefly about Ariana, joking he'd "send videos of Ariana's upcoming tour to a reporter from People." Ethan also shared more pictures of Ariana Grande celebrating the upcoming Wicked: For Good movie, while Ariana "liked" the Gen V post that Ethan shared to his Instagram story. (Cosmopolitan)

Yahoo! Entertainment also reports on the alleged "breakup," commenting that there are tabloids and blind items suggesting that Ariana Grande and Ethan Slater's relationship is in trouble, and "it's worth taking those with a grain of salt." Yahoo also mentions Ethan's absence from the VMAS, but includes Ethan's sharing of Ariana's acceptance speech on his Instagram story and other content supporting Grande. The pair have both also "liked" one another's Wicked: For Good cast portraits on Instagram, and Grande "liked" Ethan's Gen V post shortly after it was published. Yahoo overall states that we have learned "not much" regarding the status of their relationship. (Yahoo! Entertainment).

Answer 1

Upon sifting through numerous sources and doing my own digging on social media, I have found that there is not enough information to prove or disprove this claim. Rumors began circulating back in early September when Slater was not seen accompanying Grande at the MTV Music Video Awards ceremony. Reportedly, Ariana Grande was seen at the ceremony with both of her parents, brother, and brother-in-law. This was highlighted in an article published by People Magazine. While it is often frowned upon to utilize sources that focus primarily on celebrity news and human-interest stories because they often contain significant bias, I have chosen People Magazine as a starting point solely because it has been in operation for roughly 50 years, and has a relatively high reliability score according to Ad Fontes Media’s nonpartisan Media Bias Chart. This ultimately led me to assume that People Magazine was a good place to begin investigating this claim. Moving on, I took it upon myself to look at Ethan Slater’s posts and likes on Instagram to see if his internet activity could shed any light on the state of his relationship with Ariana Grande. Ultimately, I found that Ethan Slater posted a clip of Ariana Grande’s acceptance speech on his story following the MTV MVA awards on September 7, 2025. While this may sound insignificant, in a recent study conducted by the Parkview Health Research Repository, approximately 61.3% of participants in the study were classified as “clean breakers,” which include people who did very little monitoring, interacting, or communicating with their ex-partner on social media. When looking at the results from this study and comparing them to the situation at hand, we’d think it’d be safe to assume that the two have not broken up, as they still monitor and interact with each other on social media. However, we must recognize that these are the personal lives of celebrities we are talking about. There is no way to truly know the state of the relationship between Slater and Grande unless an official statement is released in an interview or online.

Comments

Great fact check and good understanding of sources.

Answer 2

the claim stated above is misleading, as I have done my research there is not one article or anything on social media that has primary evidence that Ariana Grande and Ethan Slater have broken up. There is not enough evidence to prove that the two have split up, therefore this claim is misleading and possibly false. The rumors began back in September when fans speculated that Ariana and Ethan had split up because she didn’t bring him to the VMAS. I did some digging and it seems that Ariana has always brought her significant other to this event, this time she only brought her family. Although no one really knows why she didn’t bring him or why he couldn’t attend. For my primary sources I did some digging of my own and searched for direct statements or direct posts of ariana or ethan, including their verified instagram accounts and recent activity. There was no proof or evidence that the two had split up. According to the daily mail fans are also speculating the split because she has had her hair dyed blonde for the past 3 years  and has recently dyed it brunette, they are calling it the “break up” hair. This is a secondary source and it provides some public speculation but does not include direct quotes or verified evidence.  Daily mail is known to have poor fact checking and bad sourcing which makes them nonreliable. The bias here comes from the channel's tendency to speak on celebrity gossip and drama so that they keep readers entertained.  Therefore, without verified information coming from the celebrities themselves we’ll never really know if they have split or not. However, because social media and articles don’t have any primary evidence I took it into my own hands to do some research that might be able to tell me where they stand with each other at the moment. To begin, I went into ethan and Ariana's instagram following and checked if they followed each other, they do. This tells us that whether or not they are broken up they are still cordial and mutual friends. Then I tried to see if they had interacted with each other recently. On Ethan's instagram I looked at 5 recent posts from the dates Oct 1- Oct 21, not one post was liked by her. But I did some more digging and went back to one of his first posts and scrolled through his likes and not one post she had liked, this tells us even when they were dating she didn’t like his posts to begin with so this won’t help us find out whether or not they have split. As I was doing more research I came across a verified Instagram account with thousands of followers that posts Ariana's latest updates and throwbacks basically a fan page of her and I looked through the following and little did you know Ethan follows it. This tells me that he isn’t an ex boyfriend because this would be a little weird and obsessive if an ex was following an account created for die hard fans of Ariana that want to see everything she’s doing. But right when I think they are still dating I get stuck in a dead end, as I go through Ariana’s recent posts and like’s Ethan has not liked a single post so we are once again misled. But for evidence i only found indirect speculation from fans and channels that speak on gossip and not from a verified source. The evidence we do have is that the two still follow each other and have not publicly confirmed the split. I also tried contacting the source of the person who made the original claim but I have yet to receive a message back. I can see how there might be potential bias between fans and what they think of the break up, but however at the end of the day we will never know the truth unless they speak on this situation. We can do as much digging as we can but we will never know. 

Sources: 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/lifestyle/article-15238347/ariana-grande-brunette-hair-blonde-ethan-slater-breakup.html