…but Facebook “makes it much easier.”
Facebook isn’t to blame for divorces any more than guns are to blame for people being murdered.
But if you give somebody a tool when they have intent to commit the act anyways, then the tool becomes an important part of the story. Facebook does facilitate affairs.
I know of a couple that recently went through a divorce, just about every point made in the article linked here fits perfectly with the situation that I witnessed. They both worked, and their kids had grown up. Then they sold her business and she was out of work. He kept working. She didn’t find a job, but increasingly, she spent her time online. With a Facebook account, she started connecting with old friends from high school and her network started to grow.
Her husband is decidedly non-techy and doesn’t go online. So he’s oblivious to what goes on. But she kept busy with her new social life. Facebook made it easy to find out about high school reunions at local bars, and to connect with new friends made at these parties.
Over the past year or so, she pushes for a divorce and it ultimately happens. The family almost unanimously agrees that she’s not the same person anymore. It’s as if she’s reverting to her teenage years. She has nothing interesting to talk about anymore, because all she talks about are her connections and social events with her new friends. When she’s with her family and the friends that she’s known for so many years, people notice that she’s tuned out and constantly texting with her online social network about the next gathering or hearing about how one of her new friends wants to ask another friend out. It’s frustrating to her contemporaries who believe that a social gathering is for people to socialize with the other physically at the gathering, not with people across the messaging networks.
I’m not blaming Facebook, or any other technology for her divorce and for how she’s acting. To me, though, it is clear that social networking facilitates a lot of connections between people that might not otherwise connect. In addition, if you have a partner that is not technically savvy and doesn’t go online, then social networking can be an effective way to quietly connect with a new group of people under the radar. Technology and social networks opens doors that were not typically available in the past.
Read the whole article: Is Facebook becoming a ‘tool’ for cheating spouses?
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
This is a very interesting association. In one of our classes in college, we discussed how there have always been message boards throughout history. Newsletters and bulletins that were out before electricity gave the medium for people to interact in a public forum – affairs and all.
Humans don’t seem to change, just the technology. :(
I also find it weird that Internet Addiction is not a huge topic of discussion anymore. Have these social networks made it acceptable to be online all the time?
I agree that humans don’t change much.
And to your point about Internet Addiction not being as big of a topic of discussion… Ya… It’s not interesting news because it’s passé. Everybody is addicted now! ;-)
It used to be that a lot of techies were often plugged it. But now, everybody is plugged in a lot of the time. I have a Facebook account, but I’m not very active. I have accepted about 100 friend requests, but I think I may start unfriending, or maybe just clicking on the hide button so that I don’t have to see the never-ending stream of inanities that all of these people are posting.
Ya, I think Facebook and Twitter does provide a notion of acceptability. The way that they prompt you to say what you’re doing right now is calling out for each person to say something, even when they don’t have anything to say. As if, even when you’re doing nothing of great interest, you should still tell the world about it. Maybe it makes uninteresting people feel like celebrities that they can have hundreds or thousands of friends and maybe they feel that all of these people actually care about their boring life.