Divorce and the Internet

"These figures are troubling given the increasing popularity of couples meeting online."

"It suggests that in the early years of marriage couples who meet this way might lack sufficient social capital, or close support networks around them to deal with all the challenges they face."

"Our finding in NO way undermines or diminishes the vital role of online dating. But it does highlight the greater risks and difficulties of getting to know a relative stranger where reliable sources of background information and subsequent social support are less readily available."

Harry Benson, research director, Marriage Foundation, United Kingdom

"For online couples, wider social bonds between families and friends have to form from scratch rather than being well established over years or even decades."

"It is therefore not entirely unsurprising that the input of family, friends or co-workers reduces the risk of making a hasty mistake."

"The fact that the added risk disappears after the first three years of marriage points to the importance of social capital established over the long term through families and friendships and communities."

U.K.-based study

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A new study commissioned by the Marriage Foundation in Britain and prepared by the polling company Savanta ComRes, concludes that spouses who discovered one another through online sources are divorced at a six times higher rate than their contemporaries who met each other through friends and family. Married couples who meet online, according to the report, have a 12 percent higher chance of being divorced within the first three years of their marriage in comparison to two percent who found partners the traditional way, through friends and family.

Researchers polled over two thousand individuals 30 years of age and older, married at least once. Adjusting the data for the decade when couples met, age, gender and occupation, it was still found that divorces were more likely to occur among online daters in their early years of marriage. The data conclude that seventeen percent of married couples meeting online divorced within the first decade, in comparison to ten percent of those for whom conventional dating led to romance and marriage. 

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Social capital and the lack of it through online discoveries was cited as a major factor, defined as the support network of friends and family that could be called upon in times of stress to help a couple deal with unanticipated pressures in their relationship. According to the polling results, eight percent of spouses who had met while at school, and seven percent whose work environment was the place of meeting, had divorced within the first three years.

Once couples manage to hold steady past the initial period of familiarity and coping together with the intention of preserving their marriage through making it work in the early stages of marriage, the background of how they met has far less of an impact, diminishing the rate of divorce occurrences. The divorce rate fell close to 20 percent, irrespective of how they met; through friends and family, at a bar or online.

Another finding carried out by eHarmony and Imperial College Business School found that by the year 2037, most newborns in the United Kingdom will be offspring of parents who had met on the internet. At the present time, studies indicate close to a third of relationships were formed online.

About a third of couples  met online, the study found. (iStock)

"The digital world has streamlined the online dating process -- making it easier to find someone while ensuring that they match your criteria."

"2035 will be an instrumental year for finding love and begin a new era of 21st century dating."

Dr.Paolo Taticchi, teaching fellow, Imperial College London