Indonesia’s religious affairs minister has warned that smartphones and social media are facilitating adultery and eroding marital bonds, describing the nation as being in a “yellow light” phase of family instability.
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“Smartphones make it easy to flirt or cheat,” Minister Nasaruddin Umar told a gathering of marriage counsellors on October 30, as quoted by the Jakarta Globe. “If we’re not careful, we’ll end up being slaves to social media.”
The warning comes as nearly 400,000 couples divorced in Indonesia last year, with official data showing persistent conflict, financial pressure and domestic violence as the leading causes.
While the total was down from recent years, officials remain concerned about the scale and social consequences of high divorce rates.
“We’ve hit a yellow light,” Umar said at the same event, calling on Indonesians to rebuild households “that talk, care, and pray together”.
Statistics Indonesia recorded about 394,000 to 399,000 divorces in 2024, depending on compilation methods. The figure marks a continued decline from 463,654 in 2023 and 516,344 in 2022.
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