DIGITAL INFLUENCE ON MARITAL STABILITY: A TIME-SERIES ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL MEDIA USE AND DIVORCE IN JAMAICA, 2005–2024

This study examines the impact of social media use on divorce rates in Jamaica between 2005 and 2024, incorporating both socioeconomic and demographic factors. Using a longitudinal time-series design, annual divorce data were obtained from the Statistical Institute of Jamaica. In contrast, social media penetration, urbanisation, unemployment, and median age at marriage were used as predictors. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression and Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average with Exogenous Input (ARIMAX) models were employed to examine both contemporaneous and lagged effects. Descriptive analysis revealed that divorce rates increased from 1.2 per 1,000 population in 2005 to 1.9 per 1,000 in 2024, while social media penetration rose from 15% to 78%. OLS results indicated that a 10-percentage-point increase in social media use is associated with a 0.12 per 1,000 increases in divorce rates (p < .01), with unemployment contributing 38.46% and social media 23.08% to the overall effect. ARIMAX modelling showed that social media had a combined contemporaneous and lagged effect of 0.018, representing 33.96% of the total influence, highlighting persistent temporal effects. Urbanisation and median age at marriage contributed 24.53% and 16.98%, respectively.