The question is, how does Social Media cause a divorce?
Social media has been the trendy technology used by approximately 2.77 billion users in the world. Most people can’t do without social media. Verily, it is more like their lives are attached to these applications. If you are wondering how social media can cause a divorce in a marriage, then here is how;
A spouse who spends time Facebooking can make the other feel irrelevant
As a spouse who loves social media connections, you might be thinking that always staying online may not make your fellow partner feel bad, but that is not true. Even if your spouse fails to express the way he or she feels towards your addiction, definitely they will be harboring the feelings with hopes that you will change.
You might be on the internet catching fun while using different social networks, but you may not realize that the time you spend on these applications should have been used to interact with your partner and get along with him or her better. A wife once made a statement during an interview that her husband spends more time on Facebook than he does on her and hence giving her the mindset that her husband loves Facebook more than he loves her.
What does some Research say about the negative Impact of Social Media Addiction on Marriages?
It Causes jealousy, snooping around and suspicious behaviors
Some studies have made it clear that social applications like Instagram, Snapchat, and most of all Facebook provides easy access for envious, and distrustful spouses to get information about their fellow spouse and this is true because if your spouse has some doubts about you then he or she will resort to your social media page for clarifications.
For example, a doubtful wife would want to know if her husband is cheating on her as she sees him always laughing and chatting on Facebook messenger, she will look for a way to access her husband’s Facebook password to check his messages.
Spending Too Much Time On Social Networks can cause conflicts in a relationship
Another study had indicated the couples who spend more than an hour on Facebook are more likely to have a dispute with their spouse or romantic partner. It further deduced that most of these disputes often result in breakups and divorce.
As already explained earlier, spouses who spend most of their time on social networks tend to make their fellow partners feel as though they are irrelevant or have some doubts about them. Below are some of the statistics that show how social media negatively influenced relationships today;
· A group of researchers confirmed that about 15% of married couples believed social media to be the problem in their relationship.
· Another research had shown that about 16% of married couples admitted their use of Facebook as a significant cause of jealousy in their marriage.
· Studies show that one-fourth of married couples said that Facebook causes at least one argument a week with their fellow spouses.
· An estimate shows about 33% of married adults hide their social media passwords from their fellow spouses.
Some Calculations Showing the Amount of Divorce Rates Caused by Social Media
According to onlinedivorce.com, around 1000 people in California divorced their spouses in 2018 because of the addictive use of social applications.
Onlinesdivorce.com also asserted that maybe the reason for their marital problems wasn’t just because they used the internet, but the way these unhappy spouses relied on the net more often whenever they felt depressed or as a means of distraction.
Another popular online divorce website included that one-third of all divorce filings in the year 2011 had contained the word ‘Facebook.’ And more than 80% of U.S divorce proceeding attorneys said there is a high rate of divorce cases caused by social media addiction.
A more recent study model published in Computers In Human Behaviors predicts that partners who do not use social networks are 11% happier in their marriage than partners who regularly use social media. The same research also found that a 20% annual increase in Facebook enrollment linked with a 2.18% to 4.32% increase in divorce rates.
A Chinese report also stated that married couples in China claimed that the use of social media did not bring them together but caused a series of conflicts. Most especially married men, they used these applications as a way to pick up girls, which led to fights and distractions in their relationships.
The Good Side of Social Media
Even though social media has its negative impacts, however, it has still helped most people get married today. In the United States, more than a third marriage begun online through social media networks and dating sites.
Currently, most couples see the positive impact of social media on relationships, and they work towards managing their time on online activities. They also try to be open on these online social gatherings by not trying to hide anything from their spouses.
Some couples even create prenups and guidelines within a prenuptial agreement on social media which will monitor their behavior online while interacting with other users, such as not befriending exes and not sharing private messages or sharing pictures without the permission of the other spouse.
In conclusion, the problem is not social media itself but the individual involved. If you don’t use these social applications responsibly, then definitely you create a way for marital problems to occur in your marriage. To prevent conflicts caused by social media addiction, we should regulate the way we spend time on social gatherings and mind our conversations with online users.
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