I’ve written on a number of occasions about the fascinating-but-flawed ‘Facebook causes x% of Divorces’ story that pops up in the media every year or so.It first lurched around in 2011, and then crawled back out in January. I anxiously await the next outbreak in January 2013, summing up the results of a survey conducted online in a few months.
Well, Mark Zuckerberg just got married (Mazel Tov!), which is reason enough for another outbreak. And in the Wall Street Journal, no less.
Enter the churnalists:
- Facebook Now Mentioned in More Than One-Third of Divorces (The Inquisitr)
- Is Facebook responsible for your divorce*? (Metro)
- Lawyers say Facebook a growing factor in divorce (BizJournal)
- Facebook: The Marriage Killer (EETechNews)
- Incriminating Facebook Photos and blah blah blah blah (Daily Mail)
- .. and hundreds more.
Notice how, yet again, most cite previous variants of the same story – usually the AAML 2011 version, which was itself pretty garbled. It’s amazing how far a bit of simple PR research (presearch?) can go.
* To which the answer is “No. Hang on, shit, what divorce?”