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:

1. Their spouse may be developing inappropriate friendships with the opposite sex. Or maybe, they are even reconnecting with old flames via Facebook.
2. 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.
3. 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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Or… Whether ’tis nobler to be an invasive parent or trust your teenager?

That is the question.

The fastest growing segment of people on Facebook (FB) are those over thirty-five years old. A lot of them are parents.

It won’t be long before some very clever hacker will produce Facebook G2: ‘Where your mom can’t find you.’ Why? Because even in the Internet-cell phone- GPS age, a developing young adult wants his or her privacy. Is that so bad?

This question came to my attention when I first joined Facebook about a year ago. Being a newbie, I did everything Facebook instructed me to do, including invite everyone in my email address book to be my ‘friend’. That included my teenage son, M.

One day M. passed by me in the kitchen and we did a stop and chat. “Hey, you never accepted my invitation to be my friend on Facebook.” It isn’t often I see a deer caught in the headlights look in my son’s eyes. “Mom, no.” “What? Don’t you want to be my friend on Facebook?” The look in his eyes grew desperate, less deer and more torture victim, “Mom. Please. No.”

M. was on Facebook a year before I was. My son is a healthy typical American teenager, which is to say, his peers mean everything to him. I don’t expect to know, or approve, of every little thing he’s up to, but I do expect him to be responsible and, in the most important sense, he is. He didn’t exactly ask my permission to have a FB account but he didn’t hide it either.

via To Be or Not to Be My Kid’s Friend On Facebook | World of Psychology.

My best friend through grade school was Ted Slivinski.  Like so many friends from childhood, once I moved out of the cul-de-sac we lived in next to each other, our friendship faded away. But now, thanks to the miracle of social networking sites (like Facebook) we have reconnected again after several decades of totally losing touch with each other. Ted went on to fame and fortune as a professional golfer and is now a golf pro in Idaho.

We were chatting through Facebook today when I noticed that Ted had his own blog (PAR54), so I had to check it out and was truly impressed by the concept. Here is a quote from his main page:

What is Par54? Until now we have limited our scoring capabilities to a score based on a par of 72. If we start to believe that 18 under par is possible we will start to score better based on the fact that 54 is the new target score. 54 is the new 72! Think about this….Most people can say they have birdied every hole at their home course at least once. Why not in the same round?

I love this! Since I am a marriage and family guy, I get even more excited about what PAR54 can mean for your marriage and kids.  Believe in the best of each other, shoot for unconditional love, and raise your standard of how well you love each other every day!  Sometimes our marriages suffer because we do not believe it can get any better.  Hogwash! The only think keeping your marriage from getting better is you!  I dare you to work on how well you love your spouse and kids.  You might be shocked on how well they love you back.

(Check out Ted’s blog at http://par54.blogspot.com. He can help you become a better golfer and hopefully if enough of you visit his site, maybe he’ll throw in some free lessons for me one day.)

Another Facebook Divorce – Football Fans Fake A Fling

Facebook helps hasten the end of another relationship. Okay, it’s not Facebook’s fault exactly but it was used a sort of shield in the situation.

While vacationing in Cancun, Stuart Slann, a resident of South Yorkshire, England, and loyal fan of the Manchester United football team, angered fans of a rival team. The men retaliated by throwing him into a swimming pool. During this altercation, Slann broke both an ankle and his rib.

After returning home, the ankle-breakers concocted an elaborate hoax wherein Stuart was enticed to drive 500 miles to meet a fictional woman named, “Emma,” that he met through Facebook for a sexual tryst. Before the meeting arrangement, Stuart and “Emma” communicated via text message and Facebook.

Slann found out, after a lengthy wait and a ridiculous photo, that the same men who threw him in the Cancun pool where in fact “Emma,” after a phone call to “her” cell was answered by one of the men. The scam led to Slann’s eventual divorce.

It was good to read a story this morning reporting that facebook has ousted some 5,600 child sex offenders. It reminds me that we need to be vigilant in keeping our kids safe online and checking their social sites.

Don’t let your kids try and take a “privacy” stance about their online profiles. You need to make sure they are behaving well and are not having weird or inapropriate conversations with older men.

(posted from my iPhone)

Protect your relationship and simply avoid online flirting or sharing feelings or needs with the opposite sex.  If you catch a boyfriend or girlfriend (even if it is your fiance), you’d better think real hard about whether or not you should continue your relationship.  Flirting online or carrying on an online relationship will blossom to other things after marriage, and you’ll be a neurotic mess worrying about it.

In an age where the internet (particularly Facebook and the like) is an often all-too-defining instrument in our personal relationships, one little mouse-click can get you into a sticky situation. On the She Knows message board, one regular poster talks about her husband’s FB friendship with an ex-girlfriend:

Just (Facebook) Friends | Bride.net – wedding, marriage and bridal news and reviews