Spouses and Their Attorneys are Watching Social Media, and Social Media is Watching You

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By: J. Wyatt Wimberly, Esquire

As social media use has become more and more prevalent over the past decade, it has therefore become a normal part of everyday communication, social interaction and life in general.  Social media is also increasingly cited, or otherwise implicated, in divorce proceedings.  I have had countless clients come to me with evidence from Facebook or Twitter implicating their spouse for various infringements.  In the context of divorce, social media evidence is most often used to corroborate the inclination to commit adultery by way of photographic evidence or inappropriate comments made to someone other than a spouse.  However, I have also used Facebook and Twitter to illustrate disparaging remarks made about the other spouse or use of alcohol or drugs.  It is important to be aware of what one chooses to put out there on the web, because people like me ARE looking and we WILL find it.

There have been a number of studies over the past several years that show how big of a role social media, especially Facebook, can play in divorce.  In 2011, the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers stated that 33% of all divorce filings contain some mention of Facebook.  More recently a multi-university study published last year in the Journal of Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, found a correlation between the frequency of Facebook use of people in romantic relationships and the frequency of conflict with their romantic partners.  Indications are that the more one uses Facebook, the more likely negative relationship outcomes such as emotional and/or physical cheating, jealousy over past partners, break-up and divorce, result.

Perhaps most fascinating is the idea that certain algorithms can be used to construct diagrams showing the dispersions of two individual’s mutual friends on Facebook which can, in turn, be used to “predict” the likelihood that a couple may be close to breaking up.  A study conducted by Jon Kleinberg and Lars Backstrom (found here) ,  used a large sample size of Facebook users to determine whether or not the diagrams of mutual-friend dispersions of a Facebook user could indicate if they were currently in a relationship.  The study showed that couples involved in a romantic relationship usually had a friend network that resulted in a “high-dispersion” diagram of mutual friends; meaning they were not well-connected to one another.  However, when this predictor was wrong (i.e. the Facebook user WAS in a relationship but DID NOT have a “high-dispersion” network diagram), the chances that the couple would end their relationship in the next two (2) months increased by 50%.  The idea that such an algorithm could predict, to any extent, trouble in a relationship should be very telling as to how relationship troubles play out over social media.

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