Survey: Facebook plays a destructive role in a third of U.K. divorces

By Mike Flacy December 30, 2011

Facebook-browsing

According to a recent survey of 5,000 divorce petitions conducted by U.K. blog Divorce-Online, approximately 33 percent of divorce petitions within the United Kingdom contained the word “Facebook” and indicated that the opposing party in the divorce utilized Facebook in a manner that was destructive to the relationship. This is a sharp increase from 2009 when only one in five petitions mentioned the social network as an issue. The most common reasons that Facebook appeared in the petitions included inappropriate Facebook messages, potentially sexual in nature, that were sent to members of the opposite sex, spouses undergoing a trial separation that posted nasty comments to each other, and Facebook friends that reported a cheating spouse’s behavior to the other party in the relationship.

According to the managing director of Divorce-Online Mark Keenan, he stated “Facebook has become the primary method for communicating with friends for many people. People contact ex-partners and the messages start as innocent, but lead to trouble. If someone wants to have an affair or flirt with the opposite sex then it’s the easiest place to do it.” With the mention of Facebook in approximately 1,650 divorce petitions in the United Kingdom, it’s clear that the growth of the social network has had an increasingly negative effect on troubled marriages over the last two years. The people conducting the study also searched for the work “Twitter” in the divorce petitions, but only 20 out of 5,000 petitions mentioned the competing social network.

Related Videos

According to a similar study conducted by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers during 2010, over 80 percent of members have used social networking evidence during a divorce case. Facebook was the most commonly sited as a resource for evidence of infidelity with approximately two thirds of members claiming to use Facebook to gather dirt on spouses. Other sources included MySpace, Twitter and other unnamed, miscellaneous social networking sites.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Social Media

Sick of having an ocean between you and your beloved? Get married on the internet!

In today’s world partly governed by fantastic technological advances designed to make life easier and more manageable, it’s very easy to claim that anything is possible - even conducting the sacrament of matrimony over the World Wide Web.
Long distance relationships are no longer a pain to deal with because of services like Skype, FaceTime, and Google+ Hangout, which allow couples to pretend they are within arm’s reach, and abandonment at the altar is an even lesser problem because overseas couples can now opt for a proxy marriage, a legal procedure that lets couples get married even when the other party is not present at the moment.
Apparently, this has been a longstanding practice, dating back to the early 1700s when Marie Antoinette was wed to Louis XVI despite his absence. According to the New York Times, the option of a proxy wedding is rarely used in the country and is usually afforded by members of the military that are assigned to hostile territories, when they are concerned about possibly dying in combat and leaving behind families without benefits. Lately, there is an increase in the number of people from immigrant communities in the U.S. - who would like to avoid travel costs - also seeking out this alternative so they can marry someone from their homeland without having to spend for a ticket back home.
Despite the arrangement’s partial legality (only a few states recognize its validity, and most require the other party be a member of the military), proxy marriages are also being viewed as a potential breeding ground for immigration fraud and human trafficking violations. Many of those authorized to conduct these unions are hesitant to do so because the number of people hoping to enter the country through loopholes is increasing at an alarming rate.
Adam Candeub, a Michigan State University College of Law professor studying proxy marriage, thinks “part of the reason for having the two people come and appear before a priest or a judge is to make sure it is a freely chosen thing.” Another valid reason would be to avoid potential marital mishaps, such as being ensnared by a partner who is only after permanent residency or citizenship in the U.S., or even being used as a means to transport women (without their consent) into the country who come here to be sex workers.
Don’t be discouraged, though. When proper precautions are taken, proxy marriages are actually a good way to transcend distance and legalize the bond between you and your beloved abroad. Make sure you consult an attorney before going through the process to ensure you fulfill all the requirements and that your marriage will be recognized as valid.

Smart Home

Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘married’ status update breaks 1 million Facebook Likes record

Less than 48 hours after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on his Facebook Timeline that he officially married his long-time girlfriend Priscilla Chan, the status update has since gained more than one million Likes, surpassing previous records for breaking news on the social media website.
Of course, Zuckerberg breaking his own record on his own site comes as no surprise. Coming off a wild past week, Zuckerberg must have at least earned a few more fans who were following closely after the impending Facebook IPO event. To date, The Zuck has more than 14 million subscribers, with the wedding status update garnering roughly 730 comments from fans and friends. While the update on Priscilla Chan's Facebook page may not have amassed an equally massive public reaction, the numbers can hold its own. At the time of publishing, Chan's wedding status update on her Timeline shows nearly 40,000 Likes and 80 congratulatory comments, and those digits are still rapidly increasing.
The wedding caught much of the general public by surprise after an eventful week for Zuckerberg. The intimate and small backyard wedding took place on Saturday, just a day after Facebook became public, and the bride wore a simple lace gown with Zuckerberg's ruby wedding ring which he designed himself. Guests who arrived thought they were invited to celebrate Chan's graduation from medical school. The college sweethearts met during their undergraduate terms at Harvard and began dating even before Zuckerberg changed the social media world with the creation of Facebook.
Before the wedding status update, Zuckerberg's most popular Facebook post was his thank you note to Steve Jobs after the Apple co-founder passed away in October of 2011. That post received more than 580,000 Likes and 201 comments -- perhaps because it was a little more expected coming from an iconic figure in Silicon Valley. Still, those are the kind of reactions we'll never see on our own Facebook pages.
If these numbers are any indication, Zuckerberg's wedding status update just might be this year's Prince William and Kate Middleton's royal nuptials.

Social Media

StumbleUpon engineers help man propose to girlfriend

stumbleupon-party

Noted in a recent post on the official StumbleUpon blog, the employees at the social media company lent a helping hand to a lovesick Stumbler from Wyoming. A group of engineers at the company assisted 25-year-old Tyrel in proposing to his 23-year-old girlfriend Marquita through a seemingly random collection of Internet pages. The engineers created a specific stumble session of Internet sites onto Marquita’s StumbleUpon account and collaborated with Tyrel to pick out a preset time when the session would be active.
Tyrel had handpicked a collection of quirky sites themed around love including a photo shoot of a recently married couple warding off a zombie attack and a YouTube video of a Siberian husky named Mishka that barks out "I Love You". The final click of the stumble button led to Tyrel's Tumblr account that he setup especially for the proposal. As Marquita scrolled down the page, she viewed photos of Tyrel holding up a whiteboard that slowly spelled out "Will You Marry Me?". In addition, Tyrel recorded the proposal through two cameras to publish the video on YouTube. The first camera watched a high angle of the couple as Tyrel was on one knee waiting and the second camera recorded Marquita's facial expression as it occurred. (See the video below.)
The couple both have StumbleUpon accounts and frequently spend afternoons wandering through the Internet with the social networking sites. This social wedding proposal is just a continuing string of web-infused proposals. Last week, a Google employee in New York City used a clever application of Google Maps to lead his girlfriend on a scavenger hunt of love. In 2009, a man named Grant Robertson proposed to Mashable writer Christina Warren over Twitter, but that wasn't the first marriage proposal over the micro-blogging social network.