DIGITAL economy has found a market for almost everything, including the most intimate corners of human life. Marriage, once regarded as a deeply personal covenant, is increasingly repackaged as a form of online entertainment. Private conversations become viral clips, domestic conflicts become serialized drama and the painful disintegration of relationships becomes content designed to capture attention in an economy where every click has monetary value.
Pakistan registered approximately 85,000 divorce cases in 2023, around 91,000 in 2024 and well over 100,000 in 2025. Comprehensive province-wise and district-wise national statistics remain limited, but the available figures point to a clear upward trend. Family courts across the country have experienced a steady increase in divorce, khula, maintenance and custody cases. In Rawalpindi alone, more than 15,000 family-related cases were registered during 2025, while Karachi also recorded thousands of khula decrees during the same period. These examples illustrate a nationwide phenomenon rather than isolated local developments. Behind every statistic lies a family in distress, emotional trauma, economic hardship and changing social expectations. What this growing social challenge is receiving instead, from a significant part of Pakistan’s social media ecosystem, is entertainment.
The pattern has become disturbingly familiar. Couples publicly celebrate their marriage, share every milestone online and when the relationship collapses, transform the breakup into content. Interviews, livestreams, emotional disclosures and public accusations turn private tragedy into digital entertainment. Marital conflict has become another genre of social media, where personal anguish is exchanged for attention, the audience consumes intimacy, algorithms reward engagement and the digital record outlives both the marriage and the moment.
A Gallup Pakistan survey found that 48% of Pakistanis identify lack of patience as the lead-ing factor behind rising divorce rates, followed by disconnect from religion at 33% and the influence of digital and Western media culture at 27%. These findings suggest that the issue extends beyond economics or changing social norms. It also concerns the values and beha-viours people absorb from the culture around them. Social media does not simply reflect attitudes towards marriage. It increasingly shapes them. When divorce is repeatedly packaged as empowerment, personal growth or liberation and intimate marital struggles are monetized for views and followers, younger audiences internalize a model of relationships in which commitment appears conditional and perseverance is undervalued. The content does not directly cause divorce, but it influences the emotional framework through which couples interpret conflict, disappointment and sacrifice. In a culture where even the most sacred relationships can be transformed into content, sustaining a marriage becomes harder than selling its collapse.
The greatest cost of this public spectacle is often borne by children. Divorce can leave children struggling with guilt, anxiety, confusion, anger and declining academic performance. For many, the emotional consequences persist well into adulthood, affecting mental health, trust and their ability to build stable relationships of their own. Social media magnifies that burden. What was once a private family tragedy now becoming a permanent digital archive. Children are left to navigate not only the pain of their parents’ separation but also a public record of interviews, livestreams and videos revealing intimate details of their family life. No previous generation of children from broken homes has had to carry the weight of such permanent and public exposure.
Pakistan’s cultural and religious traditions have long regarded marital privacy as a matter of dignity rather than secrecy. The Quran describes spouses as ‘garments’ for one another, a powerful metaphor of mutual protection, comfort and the safeguarding of each other’s ho-nour. Islam recognizes that some marriages end and permits divorce, but it also surrounds separation with restraint, discouraging the public exposure of intimate grievances. That ethic stands in sharp contrast to a digital culture that rewards the public performance of private pain. An interviewer urging a recently divorced spouse to recount the most intimate details of a failed marriage is not merely informing the public. They are converting human suffering into a commercial product and consent alone does not erase the ethical questions that follow.
This is not an argument for stigmatizing divorce or for pressuring people to remain in mar-riages that have genuinely failed. Marriages fail for real reasons and the freedom to leave an untenable situation is a legal and moral right. The argument is narrower and more specific, that the public performance of marital breakdown on social media causes harm that extends beyond the individuals involved, normalizes the treatment of sacred private experience as commercial content and provides the young people watching with a model of marriage and divorce that serves the algorithm’s appetite for emotional spectacle rather than their own long-term flourishing.
Social media has brought immense benefits to Pakistan, creating space for education, civic engagement, entrepreneurship and public debate that scarcely existed a generation ago. The problem is not the platform but the choice of what we reward. It can amplify knowledge or commodify human suffering. That choice belongs to content creators, interviewers, platform owners, advertisers and ultimately to audiences whose attention finances the entire ecosystem. Marriage is more than a private contract between two individuals. It is the foundation of the family and the family remains the foundation of society. When the most intimate moments of that institution are packaged, marketed and consumed as entertainment, we are not simply selling content. We are selling something far more valuable. We are selling the sacred.
—The writer is PhD in Political Science and visiting faculty at QAU, Islamabad. ([email protected] and tweet@zafarkhansafdar.)
