A Saudi man has divorced his wife because she ignored his WhatsApp message, according to a report in local media.

The husband was quoted as saying that his wife was so busy with mobile phone calls to her relatives and friends that she did not have time to take care of their children and home.

The woman reportedly said that she did not reply to her husband because she had many phone calls to make at the time.

However, the husband said he was convinced she was negligent because he had seen that she had read his message. This is because WhatsApp has blue ticks showing that a message has been read. If a message is not read, then the ticks remain grey, he said.

A study by the UK-based online services company, Divorce Online, reported that more than one third of divorces in 2011 were linked to addiction to the social networking site Facebook.

Another study based, on an opinion poll conducted by Pew Research Center earlier this year, showed that one out of four husbands said that smart phones diverted their attention away from their partners. Others said that the Internet brought loving people together.

 
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