Facebook is cited in 33 percent of divorces in the United Kingdom. This is for the year 2011: the statistic increased from 20 percent for the year 2009. Will it be over 50 percent by 2015?

Facebook is increasingly being blamed as a reason for, or as evidence when, filing for divorce. In 2011, 33 percent of behavior petitions contained the name of the social network; this is a whopping increase from 2009, when only 20 percent mentioned Facebook.

The results come a survey carried out by the UK divorce website Divorce-Online: the first instance in December 2009 and a follow-up in December 2011. In both cases, 5,000 petitions were queried by the website.

The most common reasons where Facebook was cited as evidence have not changed. They were almost always related to a spouses behavior with the opposite sex, although this included using Facebook to make comments about their exes once they had separated, as well as using their Walls as weapons in their divorce battle. Here are the top three reasons:

1. Inappropriate messages to members of the opposite sex.
2. Separated spouses posting nasty comments about each other.
3. Facebook friends reporting spouse’s behavior.

By comparison, Twitter only appeared in 20 petitions as part of behavior allegations, meaning it could only be blamed for 0.4 percent of the cases. Once again though, the platform was used as a communication tool to make comments about exes.

Source: ZDNet