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."
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen! How many times can the same story be recycled over the course of two years?
December 22, 2009 - Facebook's Other Top Trend of 2009: Divorce
April 12, 2010 - Facebook to Blame for Divorce Boom
June 28, 2010 - Facebook is divorce lawyers' new best friend
January 19, 2011 - Divorce cases get the Facebook factor
March 7, 2011 - Survey Shows Facebook an Increasing Factor in Divorce
January 1, 2012 - Facebook flirting triggers divorces
Slow news cycle? Nothing else to publish? Blame Facebook for divorce!
"Sufferin' succotash."
Wow, this is some poor reporting. At first I thought the summary was to blame, but no, the articles themselves have it wrong. Facebook is being cited in 33% of all British divorces, but not as the cause. When they say cited, they mean just that: That something from Facebook was brought up in the courtroom. That could be, and in fact seems to frequently be something from well after the couple has separated, brought up as part of custody or property hearings.
Its not that surprising. Human behavior hasn't really changed over the years however the information age has made it harder to hide affairs. 30 years ago an affair 1000 miles away while on a business trip would be incredibly easy to hide. Today? Not so much. We've gone from spouses spending little time in contact to constant 24/7 contact so it is no wonder that their spouse's flaws come to light. No longer is work an 8-9 hour void for 5 days a week with no contact to their spouse. No longer do long trips pose a problem thanks to cell phones.
The more we are in contact with each other the more evident flaws are.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Shit, I'd better get into that first!
http://www.gibby.net.au
Claiming that Facebook caused your divorce is like claiming the telephone caused your divorce when you heard your wife using it to cheat on you. People need to take more time to fully understand the communications medium they have chosen. Not that it's particularly easy with a closed, privately held system such as Facebook.
Social sites such as bars cited as responsible for 33% of divorces,
The top 3 reasons cited:
Inappropriate comments to members of the opposite sex;
Separated spouses saying nasty comments about each other;
Friends reporting spouse’s behaviour.
More news @ 11, or make that 12, the year, 2012, when NOTHING HAS CHANGED!
-AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
If my chances of divorce are higher having Facebook, count me in.
Go read the story. You don't even have to have a Facebook account to get mentioned by third parties.
Next thing you know your ex cites a Facebook posting by someone you dont even know.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Maybe it's because I've been online for about 20 years now and I've learned my lesson, but I never got into the whole social networking thing. The notion of posting every triviality in my life on the web without regard for the privacy or embarrassment of myself or my friends boggles the mind.
My theory is that as reality TV has become so mainstream and so many famous-for-being-famous celebs have found wealth regardless of their lack of talent and charisma, lots of regular folk are clamoring for their 15 minutes of fame that could make them the next millionaire Snookie. I created a Facebook page just for people to find me and I purposely don't stay logged in. I was embarrassed to see the rants, self-pitying pleas, flaunting, and exhibitions posted by people I barely knew. I guess like any other new technology, it'll take time for people to learn how to manage it in their lives.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
it must have been much more difficult to dig dirt when people wanted to divorce without saying they wanted out :)
My ex dug through my slashdot comments.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I read it as this.
It enables LAWYERS to file Facebook for causes. Trust me they will anything if they can win some money in a settlement and a facebook logs gives them LOTS of information. It is a lawyers dream
http://saveie6.com/
Didn't we get rid of the 'cause' for divorce thing, and now the only cause for divorce is wanting one?
Saying that it is 'wrong' to sleep with someone else and that it should therefore cost everything the 'cheater' has is such a backwards idea.
I guess the UK still lives in the past.
Sexual conduct should have nothing to do with a marriage contract.
I think part of the problem is a lot of people don't consider marriage "permanent" anymore so divorce becomes a bit like breaking up.
That isn't correct. 90% of divorces are filed by women. A very high number of women get custody and maintenance. This leaves no negative incentive for a woman to file for divorce, hence the high divorce rate. If the children had a 50/50 chance of going to either parent and maintenance was something reasonable, you can be assured the divorce rate would drop.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
There are cases like mine where my FaceBook is never logged off and my wife can read it any time she wants. The reason is, there's nothing to hide. I've classically been "The Safe Guy" on FaceBook and at the office and elsewhere. Women will hang around me and even flirt a bit with me because they know that not only do I enjoy the attention, but that there's just no way that I'm going to be a risk to them. I'm also the guy who will bring them safely home at the end of the night if they drink to much.
:)
You make the presumption that it's an issue that it's easier for people to get caught. And yet, men acting inappropriately or stupidly probably only accounts for about half of the cases. Some guy adding his ex from high school or someone else that his wife is jealous of (and it works reversing the genders as well) probably accounts for a lot also. People are extremely insecure at times. All my ex-girlfriends which didn't turn out to be nut jobs (and even one or two that did) are on my friends list. I also have the captain of the high school cheer leading team and others which my wife could easily get jealous of if she didn't understand me well enough to know that friends are friends... wife is wife. You do some things with friends, you do some more things with wife
Now, there's another big reason for it. Women or men who got married too quickly, found out that they screwed up... maybe getting married too young, got married for the money, got married just to throw a wedding (watch TLC sometime, Bridezilla, Left at the Alter, etc...) and once the dream wedding was over, there was no point to the marriage. All kinds of reasons people get married when they really shouldn't have and then FaceBook is a great way to come up with "evidence" against their spouse so they can get out of it without getting too burned.
So, FaceBook is probably just something that magnifies problems for some people. Jealous and insecure people were able to lie to themselves beforehand and pretend like it's just their imagination and now they got some confirmation it wasn't. Guys who act like assholes behind their wive's backs get talked about. People who were looking for a way out to begin with can find things more easily. In short, Facebook is really nothing more than a tool.
Now, for the real solution to this problem.
DON'T GET MARRIED. Marriage is a religious commitment between two people before an audience and some god of some type. In most religions, it's expected to be for life. If you and your girl are two people who are the types to not "stick together through thick and thin" then getting married in the first place is a lie. In modern times where a woman is able to put food on her own table, buy her own cloths and if necessary put a roof over her own head, there's absolutely no good reason for marriage other than religious belief. If you have kids together and are worried about the issue of custody if one of the parent die, there are civil unions and contractual agreements for that. You don't have to get legally married to have a wedding party. You don't have to get legally married to get some guy in a funny costume or hat ask you if you love each other. Legal marriage is an institution which says "I'll make a promise to this lady because I love her and I don't want her to ever worry about where her next meal is coming from. I legally take the responsibility of this woman and promise that since she is incapable of taking care of herself if need be, this will take care of that." and to a woman it says "I'm too weak to care for myself and I need some legal protection that makes it so he can't just run off to be with someone else without some form of legal and financial repercussion. So even if he does ditch me for someone who's willing to do things I'm not, he'll owe me for life". Civil union allows all the things like "If the decision comes whether to take me off of life support, I want this person to choose", but so does a living will.
Just remember, marriage is designed to protect the weaker gender. Oh... marriage is also the core of the entire divorce attorney business.
Online petition means you don't get the >45 age-range, & something tells me ye olde people divorce too.
Facebook doesn't cause divorces. People cause divorces. Guns don't kill people. People kill people. Both guns and Facebook are inanimate tools, that are initiated by volition. These tools just make it easy to shoot ourselves in the feet and rightfully so. We must exercise caution when using any tool. Personal responsibility lies with us until the tools malfunction.
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
Before, the guys would go to the pub, or hunt, or fish, or play soccer, whatever, with their friends, complaint about their wives to each other, harmlessly flirt with a girl or two. Girls would go shopping or have a drink, or go to the gym, whatever, with their friend girls, complaint about their husbands, check out some good looking dudes, no problem.
Everybody needs to blow some steam once in a while. It's really, really hard to keep a marriage. It takes lots of patience and you need to go out and decompress or else looking at your spouse's face every fucking day will become unbearable. People used to talk to friends and have a few drinks, words would be forgotten overnight. Now, every little fucking detail of what you do or say gets recorded forever. This is not the way normal life is meant to be.
I don't know who is more stupid. People having behaviours online that can put them in trouble, knowing they'll be publicly available forever, or their spouses, spying on them and them overreacting to things that would be perfectly normal if they hadn't happened online.
Divorces are painful and destructive. You basically have to turn all your life inside out. You destroy your children's world. Is it worth it because of pesky things like Facebook blabbering? If you don't have the stomach to put up with a lot of stuff you should never have gotten married and had kids in the first place.