Home> China
Internet games cause 20% divorce rate
December-8-2009

About 20 percent of the divorce cases of the post-80s generation in the last two years have been caused by overindulgence in internet games, the People's Court of Haidian District revealed recently.

The conclusion was made by a court investigation of over 100 post-80s divorce lawsuits in the past couple of years.

According to Judge Gao Qing, the spouse who overindulged in the games seldom did housework, and some of them even lost jobs. The addiction to gaming led many husbands to ignore family relations and undermined their roles as the family breadwinner.

The Beijing News reported that gaming habits were often shaped before marriage, and open knowledge of them did not affect relations before tying the knot.

The investigation also concluded that people of the post-80s generation are usually incapable of doing housework and do not have a strong sense of responsibility to family. They often marry rashly without knowing the meaning of true love, leading the court to treat their divorce lawsuits with caution.

Gao said that the post-80s generations do not deal well with family relations because of lack of experience and too much egotism. This causes complicated problems, such as that of how to manage the split of finances between the couple, to emerge.

"Financially, they rely heavily on their parents. Many divorced couples had houses bought by their parents, so it becomes complex when dealing with how to split the assets," said Gao. The judge also added that many of them were still psychologically immature, divorcing due to their parents' wills.

The court plans to be increasingly conciliatory when facing post-80s generation divorce lawsuits, with emphasis on encouraging the seeking of psychological consultation before marriage.