• 23
  • March
    2011

Over the past 18 months, newspapers and online publications across the globe have all seemed to recite the same divorce-related story about the social media website Facebook. Specifically, that it is responsible for causing one out of every five marriages to fail.

Interestingly enough, it now appears as if this so-called fact is actually more like fiction.

While Facebook and other social media websites can undoubtedly cause some marriages to flounder and perhaps fail - users can meet new people or rekindle old romances - divorce attorneys and family researchers have indicated that there simply isn't sufficient evidence to support the one in five Facebook claim.

In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics has found that both the divorce rate and the marriage rate have dropped as use of the internet has increased.

Why then did the one in five Facebook claim flourish on such a grand scale?

According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, one of the primary reasons that the one in five Facebook claim flourished was likely the general dearth of information regarding the exact causes of divorce.

To date, academic research on the subject has been largely confined to studying whether a couple is likely to divorce (potential underlying causes) as opposed to the actual reasons for divorce. Furthermore, other studies that have attempted to discuss actual reasons for divorces have been confronted with a relatively small number of willing participants and/or no readily discernible trends.

"To do this kind of research requires a huge amount of persistence," said George Levinger, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Massachusetts.

In addition, many states have simply stopped tracking divorces altogether while the National Center for Health Statistics declared the collection of divorce statistics "provisional" back in 1996.

Fortunately, the Census Bureau began tracking divorce data in 2008 through an annual survey and, as a result, the causes of divorce may eventually become more apparent.

In the meantime, feel free to log onto Facebook.

Stay tuned for developments from our Denver divorce blog ...

If you would like to learn more about dissolution of marriage or asset protection, you should strongly consider speaking with an experienced legal professional.

This post is provided for informational purposes only and is not to be construed as legal advice.

Related Resources:

Irreconcilable claim: Facebook causes 1 in 5 divorces (The Wall Street Journal)