Slashdot Mirror
Facebook a Factor in a Third of UK Divorces
hypnosec writes with an excerpt from an IT Pro Portal article: "A recent survey conducted by a UK based divorce website disclosed that 33 percent of behavior divorce petitions filed cite Facebook as a cause for filing for divorce in 2011. In 2009 this figure was 20 per cent. 5000 people were surveyed by Divorce-Online, the UK divorce website, during 2009 and 2011 covering Facebook as a means to check behavior of spouse with the opposite sex and spouses using the social networking platform to comment about their exes post the separation. Three reasons that came out on the top for listing Facebook in divorce petition were inappropriate messages sent to the opposite sex, posting nasty comments about exes, and friends on Facebook reporting about spouse's behavior."
It's not facebook, per se. It's the internet. The fact is, people are more likely to cheat if there is plenty of temptation. They always think they can get away with it and that it's worth it and it's easy to be swept away by a stranger. There's excitement. There's something new. And for the biggest part of the process, it's all in the safety of your own home. It's just "my friend online - don't get jealous". Then, eventually, it's the guy or girl you met in person. And fucked. It happend long before facebook. It happened on BBSes. The first time I got laid, I was sixteen and hooked up with a twenty one year old married chick whose husband was away at basic training. We were just friends. Then we met. And were just friends. And then we met a second time a few days later. And had sex. And it was just something we did while he was still away and justified to ourselves. And then she wanted to leave him and be with me. And months later, she left me to be with another dude she met online. And this was in the early to mid 1990s. On a BBS. Where there are only a few hundred people and they're all in local calling distance. This wasn't the only such experience I've had. And I've witnessed even more of this stuff occur since the early 90s -- friends who did the cheating. Friends who were cheated on. Friends who were the guy or girl that the cheater cheated with.
Today, you have a billion people. Everywhere and anywhere. Not only via a dialup system in your home office, but via the phone in your pocket that you can use 24x7 when nobody even knows you are using it to communicate with people. And we have photos and video and chat.
As far as I'm concerned, it is only in the most rarest exception that someone cheating with another person online isn't just a matter of time. Given enough exposure, enough temptation, and enough time - it'll happen. Period. And it has nothing to do with "facebook".
Yeah, anthropologists have posted here before. The human race as we now know it never started being in lifelong monogamous relationships until the same time as modern agriculture started. Before that it was serial monogamy ~5 years together, just long enough for kids to fend for themselves, then off to a new relationship. Once there was something to tax, the governing bodies of the world stepped in and encouraged people to stay in relationships and have lots of kids so there would be more people to tax. Tax benefits to marriage in every society... Religions just like to incorporate everything into themselves so they can act like they are in charge.