A legal practitioner, Barrister Umar Isah Sulaiman has hinted on the roles of digital devices on marital imbalance, divorce specifically.
Barrister Umar in an interview with DailyNews24 has ascertained the depth at which digital devices and social media specifically, contributed to the sorry states of marriages in Nigeria.
Barrister Umar explained how social media changed the ways of socialization stating strictly that it has both affected every individual and not couples positively and negatively.
He also opined that the roles of digital devices in marriages bore down to the addictive use of social media.
In his words: “Although there’s more to the bad influence of social media on marriages than the positive effects, the truth is social media enhances growing and better socialization. It promotes unity and evenness amongst various categories of individual.
“However, it has a lot of disadvantages which some has constituted to the high rate of marriage failures in Nigeria. Firstly, it has exacerbated romantic relationship among couples, this is a result of time it requires. When couples become addicted to social media, it entails that the couples spend much of the time needed to fulfill their responsibilities on social media.
“Secondly, as a result of inadequate time spent on social media, suspicion is established in the bond. At times, the partners engage in infidelity via the net, while other times, the unsuccessful marriage are being initiated by online socialization.
“In my field, I have come across cases where the marriage was established online and still ended online, i.e the partner met on the net and married, afterall the failure, on of the duos go back online and makes a public announcement of his/her separation. Of course, there are some that works for the partners, this is narrowed down to how social media affects youths.”
Are there social media induced divorce?
According to Barrister Umar Isah, “an analysis shows that presently digital devices constitute 60% to the rate of home breakage and marital failures. Aside from the direct influence of digital devices, some cases of unfaithfulness and Cheating traced back to abuse of digital devices and social media specifically.”
Are the divorcees always advised in courts when there are problems?
He added, “you see, that is a critical issue that needs to improved by the government in order to bring marital institutions to order. This is because the couples only when no longer can bear the marital problems. In this cases, the Court’s only work is to establish the separation by following the due processes. According to Islamic Law, the woman has right to khul’u, so as to buy her freedom from the husband.
“There should be a civil society charged with the responsibility of guidance counseling, this way, they are given necessary orientations and warning to make sure the divorce is battled and not just given in to.” He explained.
An analysis made by an academia on the influence of social media explained that social media is very addictive, stressing that using media is like taking Marijuana or Opium. It becomes part of their lives and the users create a notion psychologically that they can’t live without it.
Finally, Barr. Umar gave his quota of advice to the couples out there, stating that digital devices has become part of our lives and the world is going glob by the day and hence, appears we can’t do without it. However, couples can train themselves to control their usage and time in order to make their marriage work and hence, prevent a bad influence of the digital world.
