No one can argue that social media has permeated every aspect of our society. Everyone from your youngest friend to your oldest relative communicates on one form of social media or another. As of 2017 a huge 81% of people had a social media profile of one kind or another. With numbers that huge it’s a safe assumption that the parties involved in a divorce will have one or even all of these types of accounts. Experienced family lawyers will tell you the consequence is that documenting and presenting social media evidence is now a critical part of family law proceedings.
Ultimately, the statements on social media are often a doubled-edged sword: they are typically emotional, sometimes rash. One the one hand, social media is uniquely set up to be electronically preserved since it exists in a digital format already. What is said, posted, or streamed on social media now becomes a prime opportunity to illustrate negative behavior about an opposing party. Here’s an example: if one party claims that the other has a substance abuse issue, a Facebook album titled “Trashed Tuesdays” full of documented drunken exploits could certainly be useful evidence.
People are people, as the saying goes, and it’s often difficult, if not impossible, to get them to stop “knee-jerk” reactions to a baiting Facebook post, or to stop posting damaging or derogatory thoughts about the opposing party via social media.