
In full disclosure, both my wife and I use Facebook for our personal lives and our ministry along with my dad. Facebook has not proven to hurt or negatively impact our marriage, but I could not resist posting this very interesting study done in the United Kingdom:
Facebook is bad for your marriage according to research carried out by an online divorce service in the United Kingdom. Divorce-Online scanned their divorce petition database for the use of the word “Facebook” and found 989 instances of the word in over 5,000 divorce petitions sampled.
This means that just under 20% of all the petitions filed through the company had references to Facebook within the text of the divorce petitions.
Managing Director Mark Keenan said “I had heard from my staff that there were a lot of people saying they had found out things about their partners on Facebook and I decided to see how prevalent it was I was really surprised to see 20% of all the petitions containing references to Facebook. The most common reason seemed to be people having inappropriate sexual chats with people they were not supposed to”.
Notes to Editors:
About http://www.Divorce-Online.Co.UK
Founded in 1999, Divorce-Online is the UK leader in online divorce services and solutions that help people obtain an uncontested divorce without the need to visit a solicitor. Divorce-Online.Co.UK has helped over 60,000 couples achieve an amicable divorce.
About the research
Research for Divorce-Online was carried out on 20th December 2009 with a sample size of 5,000 divorce petitions.
So why would Facebook be mentioned in 20% of divorce petitions? My guess is that these couples were abusing the use of Facebook in several different ways:
- Their spouse may be developing inappropriate friendships with the opposite sex. Or maybe, they are even reconnecting with old flames via Facebook.
- Their spouse may be simply using Facebook too much. I’ve heard of people using Facebook for over 6 to 8 hours a day! That would be way too excessive. I think getting on Facebook for about 30 minutes in a day is decent, maybe pushing the limit, but certainly not abusive.
- Their spouse is airing out their dirty laundry through status updates. I’ve certainly heard of people hurt by what their spouse put on Facebook as a status update. An inability to communicate properly could tempt someone to handle their conflict through a social media as opposed to with their spouse.
What do you think? Why else might Facebook be hurting marriages, and have you been hurt by Facebook in your own marriage?
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