Woman blames Facebook for divorce

Story by Mike Parker/WBBM

CHICAGO (WBBM) -- Some people get so obsessed with social media that it can cost them their marriage.

Divorce, as a result of Facebook or Twitter, is a growing problem.

Shari knows it well.  While married with two kids, she got hooked on Facebook.

"I was spending sometimes four or five hours a day when I should've been cooking dinner or reading to my kids or watching a movie with my husband or just talking to my husband," said Shari.

She acquired 5,000 Facebook friends and 1,000 followers over time.

Gradually, her husband found out she had been trading messages with her ex-boyfriends when the battles began.

The marriage ended, and it's not the only one.

A survey by CensusWide suggests one divorce in seven is the result of social media.

"That sounds very low to me, to be honest," said Christine Svenson, a divorce lawyer.  "The social media world seems to crop up in at least half of my divorce cases," she said.

Shari is working to tame her obsession.

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Facebook Cited in Third of U.K. Divorces

Have you ever been caught flirting on Facebook with someone besides your significant other? Apparently you're not alone.

A new survey conducted by U.K. divorce Web site Divorce-Online found that married couples are increasingly being driven apart by transgressions that occurred on the popular social media site. So much so that 33 percent of divorce petitions in 2011 contained references to Facebook, according to the survey.

Moreover, the amount of Facebook-related divorces ratcheted up in recent years–substantially, according to the survey. In 2009, the last time the survey was conducted, Facebook was mentioned in just 20 percent of divorce petitions. In both cases, 5,000 divorce petitions were queried by researchers.

As in the 2009 survey, the most common reason for citing Facebook in a divorce petition related to a spouse's behavior with members of the opposite sex. Also, spouses used Facebook to comment about their exes and used their public walls as "weapons in their divorce battle," the survey states.

The top three reasons included: inappropriate messages sent to members of the opposite sex; separated spouses posting nasty comments about each other; and Facebook friends reporting a spouse's behavior.

"People need to be careful what they write on their walls as the courts are seeing these posts being used in financial disputes and children cases as evidence," Mark Keenan, a spokesman for Divorce-Online, said in a statement.

Facebook did not immediately respond to questions about the study.

Twitter, meanwhile, appeared in a mere 20 divorce petitions queried by researchers. Those cases commonly involved Twitter being used as a tool to make comments about exes.

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*Article found on pcmag.com