Facebook Linked to 1 in 3 Divorces in the UK

One in three divorces in the UK are linked to Facebook. That may seem like a very alarming number, but it has to be put into context, the divorces are not caused by Facebook activity necessarily, but whatever happens on the social network contributes to the decision.

The report comes from a UK divorce site, so it's not exactly from an uninterested party. However, the site does have access to data that puts it in a position to judge the influence of Facebook in such cases.

In its 2011 survey, it looked at 5,000 divorce cases. It found that 33 percent of them had references to Facebook. Most likely, the papers listed behavior on Facebook that one of the spouses found unpalatable.

The survey comes after a similar one in 2009 which found that the site was involved in just 20 percent of divorces. The big jump indicates that Facebook is becoming an even bigger part of our lives.

"The most common reasons where Facebook was cited as evidence were once again relating to spouses behaviour with the opposite sex but also spouses using Facebook to make comments about their exes once they had separated and using their public walls as weapons in their divorce battle," the site reported.

The top reason why Facebook was cited in divorces was one of the spouses sending what were deemed as inappropriate messages.

The second big reason was bad comments made on Facebook after the two had already separated. Finally, the third reason was friends of one of the spouses revealing or reporting behavior kept hidden.

Interestingly enough, Twitter was cited in only 20 of the petitions, so it's clearly not as important in this type of cases as Facebook. The nature of the site may have something to do with that, while it's still a social site at heart, people treat it much differently than they do Facebook.