Facebook Named The Cause For A Third Of UK Divorces

We all knew of Facebook to be a potential time suck, but a cause for divorce? According to Divorce-Online, a UK based divorce website, they did a survey of 5000 people in 2009 and 2011 regarding Facebook and their significant other’s behavior. 33% or 1/3 of all responses mentioned Facebook as the cause for divorce.

This is quite surprising and one of the few times in history where a social network is mentioned as the cause of a breakdown in marriage. So what exactly were the reasons why Facebook was the cause? From T3:

“The top three reasons for listing Facebook in the petitions, according to the survey, were: Inappropriate messages to members of the opposite sex; Separated spouses posting nasty comments about each other; and, Facebook friends reporting spouse’s behaviour.”

Interesting. It doesn’t seem to be a problem at all to spend time on Facebook whether that be reading up on friends’ activity or playing Farmville (help us all). Facebook and social networking in general, brings up a potential problem with relationships. Being that we can connect with many people and those of the opposite sex, it leaves room for conversations that may not be appropriate.

Similar to a man talking to another woman for an extended period of time at a party while his spouse is sitting across the room by herself, Facebook facilitates easy conversation. It’s up to Men and Women to use their judgement and realize that while use may seem private, it may and potentially will become public at some point and cause issues with a significant other.