You’re more likely to get divorced if your friends and family get divorced.
That’s what a new study says about the effect of social networks on divorce rates. The researches explained:
We find that divorce can spread between friends, siblings, and coworkers, and there are clusters of divorcees that extend two degrees of separation in the network. We also find that popular people are less likely to get divorced, divorcees have denser social networks, and they are much more likely to remarry other divorcees.
I wonder if the effect translates to online social networks like Facebook. One one hand, many people only casually know some of their Facebook “friends.” On the other hand, the study mentioned that the spread of divorce rates through social networks is not confined by geography.
I’ve already talked about how lawyer are using Facebook for evidence in divorce cases. This would be just another way that the popular social networking tool has been influencing this area of law.
Thanks to Daniel Clement for alerting me to this study over at his blog, the New York Divorce Report.
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