Does Facebook lead to divorce?

With the holiday season upon us, one of the topics of discussion around the family dinner table may be Facebook and whether constant use of the popular social networking site increases the odds of divorce. Research conducted by Divorce Online offers some surprising results. The study claims that almost 20 percent of all divorce cases are the result of a Facebook addictions or secret online romances. But it’s not just the amount of time that a spouse spends on Facebook which may cause a problem. More often than not, divorce lawyers interviewed as part of the study suggested that flirtatious wall posts and cheeky messages that rekindle old high school romances or spark new flings can cause serious damage to existing, real-life marriages.

Mark Keenan works as Divorce Online managing director and he noted that one in five of the clients that he has dealt with cited problems caused by Facebook usage as a major factor behind a decision to seek a divorce. In fact, Keenan noted that married couples who have been living together for years often discovered a nasty little secret about their spouse, through old photos posted to the site by other friends, through messages on profile walls or even by status updates.

But the biggest problem for happily married couples is when one partner notices that the other is engaging in edgy Facebook message exchanges with an unknown online “friend.” To make matters worse, some people have informed their partners about their wish to seek a separation or divorce by simply changing their Facebook status. In fact, this is precisely what happened to Emma Brady—a 35 year old woman from Britain–when her husband posted a status update on his wall noting—in the third person—that “Neil Brady has ended his marriage to Emma Brady.” Some social networking specialists contend that this may very well have been the first “Facebook divorce.” If Divorce Online’s statistics are anything to go by, then there are many more to come.