Facebook: A Tool for Cheaters?
Many people have learned that social media can be a devastating weapon in a divorce case. With the ability of a spouse to catch their significant other in a lie, or in compromising positions, it’s easy to see how websites like Facebook can open a flood gate of information.
But do these social media websites do more than make these once discrete action visible? According to a recent article in the Chicago Tribune, social media websites might actually make cheating easier.
The website FacebookCheating.com was created in response to this very problem. Ken Savage, founder of FacebookCheating.com, created the website after his wife used Facebook to rekindle a relationship with her ex-boyfriend.
Savage describes the purpose behind his website as, “to help others cope with someone cheating on them as well as shine light upon someone who is using Facebook to cheat.”
Facebook has become such common instrument in divorces that, according to a survey from Divorce-Online.com, approximately 20 percent of divorce cases mention Facebook. This is an especially shocking statistic when you take into account that Facebook has only been around for about six years.
Savage has stated that he doesn’t have a problem with Facebook, in fact he still uses and enjoys the website. Instead, Savage feels that Facebook is used as a tool to make affairs easier.
Facebook isn’t purported to be the cause of these divorces. Social media websites don’t make anyone cheat, nor do they encourage cheating. They do, however, give someone who would cheat the ability to reconnect with someone to participate.
However, there are some experts out there that believe that Facebook can actually influence people to cheat, where they would not if Facebook wasn’t at their disposal.
Stacy Kaiser, a psychotherapist and relationship expert, says about Facebook-started affairs, “It’s not your everyday affair… When it comes to something like Facebook, you are reconnecting with a long-lost love. All those teenage feelings, those college feelings come back again, you feel young again, and it drives you to do something you don’t normally do.”
In Kaiser’s quotation, she fails to note that not all affairs from Facebook are with long-lost loves. Many times Facebook is used to maintain a relationship with someone you have recently met. Or, you could have even met the person through Facebook, and have no actual contact before meeting him or her.
Just how much Facebook does “cause” divorce is debatable, yet nearly unprovable. For every illicit affair that starts due to a chance encounter on Facebook, someone can say that the cheater would have done it with someone else.
It’s important to understand that Facebook can start and end relationships, but it isn’t what should be blamed for spousal infidelity. People make decisions and actions, and personal accountability shouldn’t be lost on a website.
