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Facebook Social Networks The Courts United Kingdom

Facebook a Factor in a Third of UK Divorces 189

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."
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Facebook a Factor in a Third of UK Divorces

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  • by Overly Critical Guy ( 663429 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @12:05AM (#38569422)

    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 [networkworld.com]

    April 12, 2010 - Facebook to Blame for Divorce Boom [foxnews.com]

    June 28, 2010 - Facebook is divorce lawyers' new best friend [msn.com]

    January 19, 2011 - Divorce cases get the Facebook factor [menmedia.co.uk]

    March 7, 2011 - Survey Shows Facebook an Increasing Factor in Divorce [thenewamerican.com]

    January 1, 2012 - Facebook flirting triggers divorces [indiatimes.com]

    Slow news cycle? Nothing else to publish? Blame Facebook for divorce!

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Sounds like a perfect Reality TV comedy theme to milk. I wonder if Gilbert Gottfried would like to host the show.

        AFLAC! [huffingtonpost.com]

    • by mysidia ( 191772 ) * on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @12:46AM (#38569618)

      Welcome, ladies and gentlemen! How many times can the same story be recycled over the course of two years?

      Before Facebook was created... was there analysis done to see if Telephones, The postal service, Credit cards/ATMs,Cars, Prostitution, Hotels and Mobile phones were factors in divorces?

      I suspect a lot of divorces ended due to cheating; and driving to a cheap Hotel to meet with someone...

      And yes... the car is an enabling technology, but it doesn't cause the behavior that leads to divorces; it's just a channel enabling communication (including destructive communication).

      • by cavePrisoner ( 1184997 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @02:30AM (#38569914)
        To be fair, Facebook makes it easier to get caught. All you have to do is stay logged in once by accident. If the cheater gets caught with any of the ones you listed, it can usually be explained with business. Getting caught on Facebook is just straightforward.

        Also, facebook just looks bad sometimes, even when you haven't done anything wrong. I have an ex that likes all my posts. I haven't spoken to her in a year, but if I were married I can imagine that still creating some tension.
        • by Chrisq ( 894406 )

          I have an ex that likes all my posts.

          Post that you don't like her liking her posts. See if she likes that. Seriously, it will reveal the motivation - she is either wanting to appear friendly or doing it to potentially cause issues in future relationships.

          • I have an ex that likes all my posts.

            Post that you don't like her liking her posts. See if she likes that. Seriously, it will reveal the motivation - she is either wanting to appear friendly or doing it to potentially cause issues in future relationships.

            I know I'd "Like" that post just for fun.

          • I have an ex that likes all my posts.

            Post that you don't like her liking her posts. See if she likes that. Seriously, it will reveal the motivation - she is either wanting to appear friendly or doing it to potentially cause issues in future relationships.

            Can't you just defrienderize her, or whatever it's called?

            • You'd have to explain why you are defriending then, or they will be very pissed off when they realise. For someone like an ex anyways. I've asked one before, during the breakup if i could unfriend her so as not to see posts in my stream, it didn't go down well. It's like the ex saying can we still be friends and you replying no.
        • by LostMyBeaver ( 1226054 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @03:28AM (#38570092)
          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.
          • by neyla ( 2455118 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @03:54AM (#38570172)

            Almost agree. Minor nitpick: The religious angle isn't of importance. There's been long-term formalised bonds between husband and wife across a wide spectrum of different religions and cultures, enough so that I'd argue that the concept of "marriage", along with "funeral", "name-giving-ceremony" and "coming-of-age-ceremony" are near-universal in human culture.

            Marriage is a formal announcement of a couples intention to stay together long-term. With this announcement comes certain duties, and certain priviledges. If you're cynical about it, you could say that you should marry if the benefits outweigh the drawbacks - I did, but religion wasn't a relevant part of that question (we're both atheists)

            • by LostMyBeaver ( 1226054 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @04:27AM (#38570294)
              I'm an atheist and I really am not sure about my wife. I think she wants to believe, but I don't make it very easy to hehe.

              To me, the marriage itself is irrelevant. Actually, not entirely, I live in a country other than my own and the marriage initially made that possible. But that's not the reason we got married. Marriage was very important to her and her family... who are Christians.

              There are no duties or privileges that are not applicable within a responsible relationship that requires marriage to make so. Also, a formal announcement and a legal binding are two entirely different things. In fact, I'm a strong believer that people should be able to get legally bound in every way that marriage suggests no matter what their sex, religion or even how many there are. I think if four old ladies are living in a house together and they are all that each other has in the world, they should be able to get "legally married" so that from every perspective which the government is concerned, they are as codependent as a married couple. If one decides to leave, they can choose to hire a lawyer or sit before a mediator to decide what that person should take away from the relationship.

              It's so sad and pathetic that we live in a world where marriage and divorce is a concern of the government. What's even more humorous is that the people who are most adamant regarding marriage and the government are the ones who are also most vocal about wanting the government to be smaller and have a lesser impact on their lives.
              • by neyla ( 2455118 )

                There's plenty of duties and privileges that you get automatically with marriage, and that are difficult or impossible to get without:

                The right for your wife/husband to live with you, even if she's from a country from which immigration would normally be restricted. The right to inherit from the one who dies first. The right to be recognized as next-of-kin. Shared parental rights for any children born by default. (the "pater est" rule) Adjustments of tax-brackets if your partner earns substantially less than

            • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @04:32AM (#38570306)

              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.

            • Yeah, as far as religion goes, marriage is not considered a religious institution for some religions. Buddhism is probably the most famous example of this.
          • by lewko ( 195646 )

            I would love to see your porn collection.

          • "You do some things with friends, you do some more things with wife :)"
            You obviously don't have the kinds of friends that we do... ;->
            • hahah Love it...

              I was talking about with your friends, you chat and drink coffee... I'd hope most people do that... plus more with their wife :)

              Thanks for the giggle.
              • I was talking about with your friends, you chat and drink coffee...

                With friends you have a cup of coffee together. With the better friends, you make the cream to put into that cup of coffee...

          • by Asic Eng ( 193332 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @06:27AM (#38570752)

            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.

            I'm sure you could build a series of contractual agreements which would give you similar protections to marriage, but it would be an administrative nightmare. There is a lot to consider - visitation rights in the hospital for spouse and children, signing stuff for school, inheritance rights etc. In any case - the commitment to raise children together is a far greater one than the one to get married. If you are making it, then you might as well save yourself a lot of hassle and get married, too.

            • Probably so... but it seems that it should be a single package bundle for those things. Like you could just go to the post office, fill out a form, get it notarized and send it in and that would be the whole thing. And it should be just fine for circumstances such as some old ladies living together who are codependent and want those rights with each other as well.

              Problem is, when you call it marriage it seems that there must be some sort of sexual consummation to it. We sure as hell don't need marriage to h
          • by marga ( 455344 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @07:00AM (#38570900)

            I find your comment completely misogynist and dumb.

            Even if marriage WAS designed to protect women in the past, it doesn't mean that it cannot get a new significance with new times.

            I agree that a lot of people get married for the wrong reasons. And that it'd be better if they didn't. I feel that you are mistaken in almost everything else you say, though.

            Your statements are suprisingly dumb for a +5 comment... "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'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." ...

            Marriage goes both ways. You fail to see that a man can also need the support of a woman. If a man is disabled for any reason (be it physical or psychological) then having a wife will mean having a person by his side to support him no matter what.

            For me, marriage means: "I'm committed to you, I'll stand by your side, in the good times and the bad times, I'll respect you and care for you until death do us apart".

            [I'm a married woman, I earn the same as my husband, I didn't marry him so he wouldn't run off, nor did I marry him so he would support me economically]

          • What about spouse's pension? In many places, if you're married, your wife can can continue to get your pension if you die, whereas this isn't the case for civil unions. Also, visiting your spouse while in intensive care is easier if you're actually married rather than just being in a civil union.
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • Just because you're not still together doesn't mean you're not still friends. I still talk to some ex-girlfriends quite regularly, and I'd count them as friends, even close friends. You look for different qualities in a friend and a partner, and just because you turn out not to be compatible as a couple doesn't mean that you have to never talk to each other again. If you were together for a while, then you probably know each other better than most of your other friends know you, and once you're no longer
        • . . . solution is obvious. Choose any one of the following:
          (a) un-friend her;
          (b) add her to your Restricted list;
          (c) set Default Post Visibility settings to "Custom" and add her to the visible to "Except" list.

          Option (a), she probably notices. Option (b), she may notice, since if she checks your profile there will be almost nothing there. Option (c) she probably won't notice, unless she checks your profile and notices that posts she remembers have disappeared, in which case you can just tell her you didn't

      • by Sir_Sri ( 199544 )

        Mobile phones certainly.

        Enabling can be a strong factor. That random hot girl I met 5 years ago and befriended on facebook... why did I befriend her? If I haven't talked to her in 4.5 years (via facebook or otherwise), why am I still 'friends' with her? (Answer, I only defriend people who are bothersome). But before facebook, would I have given her my phone number? Probably not, and even if I had, she wouldn't have my current one.

        Does a phone directory that has a section for cheating spouses simply fac

      • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @03:42AM (#38570138) Homepage Journal

        Before Facebook was created... was there analysis done to see if Telephones, The postal service, Credit cards/ATMs,Cars, Prostitution, Hotels and Mobile phones were factors in divorces?

        Do a handful of google searches for $x factor in divorce and what you will see is a bunch of people trying to convince you that each thing is a factor, people trying to get your money. So yes, there was analysis done... to see if fearmongering was profitable. Answer, yes.

      • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @04:00AM (#38570192)

        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".

        • Yup, it's always been my thought that humans are essentially "opportunistically non-monogomous". If you look at it from an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense. If you constantly sleep around you aren't likely to create healthy offspring(as you may wind up dead, with an STD rendering you infertile, or in the case of women with a baby with 'weak' genetics), but if you put all your eggs into one basket, you are screwed if that basket has a hole in it.

          You read stories from people who cheat and for the
      • I suspect a lot of divorces ended due to cheating; and driving to a cheap Hotel to meet with someone...

        No, this is a UK story. There are no cheap hotels in the UK.

      • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        I suspect most divorces come about because immature people enter a life long contract without the ability to actually commit to and work with a life long contract.

        Want to reduce the number of divorces than simply make it harder to get one. Want to take a till death do us part oath, then they should be bound by it, no escape clauses. Want an escape clause then only agree to a period contract say a decade or so.

        Of course greed will win out, divorce lawyers want their money, land agents want property turn

    • by daem0n1x ( 748565 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @07:49AM (#38571076)

      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.

    • Welcome, ladies and gentlemen! How many times can the same story be recycled over the course of two years?

      You have to repeat things a lot of times for Facebook users.

  • by Headw1nd ( 829599 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @12:12AM (#38569454)
    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.
    • by Overly Critical Guy ( 663429 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @12:20AM (#38569486)

      This is supposed to be one of those dumb watercooler stories. People who don't get the internet are supposed to roll their eyes at the big, bad internet making things worse. Cheesy morning radio shows read this stories like this.

    • ... in other news, 33% of British use Facebook. [I honestly have no idea, it does seem plausible]
      • by Chrisq ( 894406 )

        ... in other news, 33% of British use Facebook. [I honestly have no idea, it does seem plausible]

        Not necessarily. Its only necessary for 33% of those who are get a divorce.

      • by azalin ( 67640 )
        actually 16.5 % would do
    • by Trepidity ( 597 ) <delirium-slashdotNO@SPAMhackish.org> on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @02:00AM (#38569826)

      It doesn't even say that anything particularly interesting was cited from Facebook. Lawyers often pad these kinds of filings with just-to-be-safe evidence, and Facebook is probably an easy source of evidence for all sorts of mundane things that wouldn't necessarily even be challenged at all. "Bob is, as of our last knowledge, in possession of the couple's former Honda Civic [attach a printed out & dated Facebook photo of Bob washing his car]" and that kind of stuff.

      • thats what makes FaceBook so great for such things.

        When you as a LEO/lawyer know XYZ but can't find evidence (so you can't Court Of Law KNOW XYZ) then if you can get something from Facebook to convince a Judge to give you a warrant to go Looking for your evidence you most likely have it made.

    • by dintech ( 998802 )

      At first I thought the summary was to blame

      Sometimes it is. It's why cmdrtaco is living off child maintenance somewhere.

    • I think it's actually even worse than that. As per the summary, Facebook is said to be involved in 33% of behaviour divorces. As far as I can tell, these are the cases where one party petitions for divorce on the grounds of misbehaviour on the part of the other party. I don't know how big a portion of divorces that accounts for, but surely not all of them. So more accurately, in 33% of a particular subset of divorces, Facebook is brought up in the courtroom
  • Not suprising... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Darkness404 ( 1287218 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @12:16AM (#38569470)
    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.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @01:25AM (#38569738)

      Having an affair is not a flaw. Snoring, forgetting to take out the trash, grabbing the remote too often, those are flaws. Things that you accept or overlook or compromise over. An affair, goes waaay beyond, when it comes to that, then you have nothing. No, you have less than that, you have lost years of your life to a stranger.

    • by adolf ( 21054 )

      Oooh, ooh! *raises hand* Can I play?

      When I'm out and about on my own for business or whatever, my wife doesn't call me and seldom expects me to call her. I might be gone for a week and talk to her for four minutes, total, and normally not even that unless there is a particularly egregious drama at home.

      Accordingly, hiding a 1k-mile-away "affair" has/would've been/is -easy- for me, and I expect no different from her.

      We've both got cell phones, so this is completely optional behavior in this modern world.

      W

      • editor's note: syphilis and HIV are unacceptable as a reward.

        If you use condoms you'll probably avoid those but if you do that regularly, you'll definitely get HPV and herpes.

        More interestingly, do you go on business trips often? What do you see as the point of having a wife if you cheat on her so much?

        • Re:Not suprising... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by adolf ( 21054 ) <flodadolf@gmail.com> on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @03:05AM (#38570036) Journal

          Naaah. Just occasionally: I'm only out of town for a week or so at a time once or twice per year, if that.

          And if something happens during that "week or so," then it's whatever -- not cheating. The wife and I have discussed it in general concept many times over our 8 years: She's only potentially offended by an emotional relationship developing that does not involve her. Meanwhile, I'm not interested in a secondary emotional relationship, so that's not an issue for me to contend with.

          (But am I interested in a temporary physical relationship? Sure. FFS, does the Earth have gravity? There's lots of cocks and lots of cunts, and most of them fit together pleasurably.)

          So, such as it is: Sometimes, fucking is just fucking fucking. This does not mean that simple fucking is necessarily fucking cheating, though you and/or your SO may view things differently -- which is OK, too.

          Does that clear up your confusion?

  • by bgibby9 ( 614547 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @12:17AM (#38569472) Homepage
    Shit, I'd better get into that first!
  • it must have been much more difficult to dig dirt when people wanted to divorce without saying they wanted out :)

  • by abelb ( 1365345 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @12:25AM (#38569508)
    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.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by pntkl ( 2187764 )
      I blame the whole technology of communication. It is responsible for 99% of marriages and divorces. I suppose gender identity disorder accounts for the remainder.
    • by Kjella ( 173770 )

      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

      Not even that, friends reporting spouseâ(TM)s behavior over Facebook is equivalent to them calling you, except you don't subpoena the phone company for that. This is like measuring how many times the word "called" appeared in court documents, then concluding 78% of divorces involved a telephone. Well duuuuuuh.

  • by AlienIntelligence ( 1184493 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @12:25AM (#38569510)

    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

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @12:28AM (#38569528)
    If my chances of divorce are higher having Facebook, count me in.
    • by syousef ( 465911 )

      If my chances of divorce are higher having Facebook, count me in.

      Why don't you just save yourself the effort and give half your shit away and stop talking to your wife and kids?

  • Just the usual meme, "People behave like dicks!" Except, word gets back faster. I don't see FB being a "cause" for any divorces: it's just the messenger.

    • Just the usual meme, "People behave like dicks!"

      ...in an effort to get more pussy.

      Genetic diversity considered good by biologists, but bad by social standards... Guess which is wrong? (Hint: It's not evolution.)

      • by syousef ( 465911 )

        Just the usual meme, "People behave like dicks!"

        ...in an effort to get more pussy.

        Genetic diversity considered good by biologists, but bad by social standards... Guess which is wrong? (Hint: It's not evolution.)

        Good luck finding a girl so dumb that she believes your twisted and unscientific views. Genetic diversity does not mean fucking everything that moves. The offspring you have has to survive to adulthood if you are to pass on your genes, and pissing off to chase down and impregnate another woman puts your current offspring at a disadvantage. You can play the numbers all you like but a single good bet is a lot better than a few dozen bad ones. Nature uses both approaches of course but you really need to have l

        • If you're playing the numbers, a single good bet PLUS some bad ones is a much better spread.

          Not to put a damper on a fine theory of misogyny, but women also have affairs. The stereotype of "fucks bad boys, marries nice men" is there for a reason. For women, children are a much more expensive proposition in terms of resources than for the men. If they can hook a nice man who will provide them with resources, that's excellent for the prospects of their offspring. But it's not so good for genetic diversity - b

          • by syousef ( 465911 )

            Your theory collapses when the baby comes out with features that make it obvious the woman has cheated - ethnicity being one obvious one. If a wife husband are European and the baby comes out with black or Asian features that's going to be hard to explain away. There is always the threat that if indisgression is discovered either sex will withdraw support and dissolve the union. If you take a look at happiness I guarantee you that once a certain age is reached it's not the playboys or cheats that are happie

  • by GodfatherofSoul ( 174979 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @01:04AM (#38569664)

    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.

  • For me, that is like saying, the automobile is responsible for 70% of divorces because it enables a spouse to drive to the house of their lover.
    PEOPLE are responsible for infidelity, not their tools.

    • 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

  • Seriously honey, it was just a one-time fling, Facebook means nothing to me...
  • by loufoque ( 1400831 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @01:53AM (#38569808)

    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.

  • Not a word.

    Self-selected from among the visitors to the Divorce-Online site?

    Without some info about methodology, there's no reason to treat this report as anything but self-promotion.

  • Did the total number of divorces go up? The TFA doesn't mention that.
    So probably people are using facebook as an excuse where they used other excuses in the years before.

  • 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.
    • To continue the analogy: It really doesn't matter how careful you are. Having a gun, or a facebook account, greatly increases the risk that others will shoot you (unintentionally or otherwise).

      They seem like fun toys, but smart people stay away from them.

  • "DivorceOnline" sampled 5000 divorced couples. Were they users of DivorceOnline? Were these 5000 folks chosen from a particularly tech-friendly subset of the overall divorced population?

    This just in! Slashdot poll reveals 50% of adult males still live with their parents.

    • +1 ^^^

      Given that the site is called "divorceonline", any of it's clients or visitors are more likely to be regular internet users, therefore, it'll be a biased sample. Were they self-selected voters?

  • Inappropriate messages to members of the opposite sex; Separated spouses posting nasty comments about each other; and, Facebook friends reporting spouse’s behaviour.

    I'm posting to slashdot, so obviously I'm no expert on interpersonal relationships. However, the reasons given for divorce seem to always be present in bad relationships. People have talked bad about each other, engaged in behaviors with members of the opposite (or same) sex in ways that make your spouse jealous, and heard about how bad thier spouse is long before we had facebook. I'm pretty sure these have been problems in relationships as long as there were homo sapiens. I'm pretty sure these problems wi

  • Now, everything someone says is recorded because they think people care to read what they have to say, so you can not delete what you say, and as usual, people will put their foot in their mouths, and now will pay for it. Back in the day with no social media, you would say something to someone knowing that it was a private conversation, and that if ever it came down to it, it would be the accuser's words against theirs...leading to a confrontation, where as today, no confrontation, proof is in black and whi

  • ...but it seems to me that documenting your infidelity on a public forum that was designed for tracking an analyzing your behavior is just stupid. Deeply so. In fact, so fucking stupid that there ought to be extra penalties for the idiots who get caught this way.

According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are totally worthless.

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