Is Facebook addiction pushing up divorce cases?

If you think excessive Facebook use by your spouse is behind your divorce, then you may be right, says a study.

Researchers, however, said that their findings do not establish a "cause-and-effect relationship" and need further individual data.

For the study, they looked at the rise of Facebook use and the rate of divorce cases in each state in the US.

They found that a 20 percent increase in the number of Facebook usage in a given state is associated with a four percent increase in the divorce rate the following year.

"People who spent more time on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites were more likely to have an unhappy marriage and were thinking about divorce," researchers added.

However, researchers could not identify who exactly was creating new Facebook accounts.

The people increasing their Facebook usage were not necessarily the same people who were getting divorced, the study noted.

The study, reported by Time magazine, was published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.