JAKARTA – (AFP) – A religious court
official in Indonesia has blamed social
networking site Facebook for a rise in
teenage pregnancies and under-age
marriages, a report said Thursday.
Siti Haryanti, a secretary at the religious
court in Mount Kidul, a town in Central
Java, said young couples were having
sex after meeting online and she had
seen the number of under-age
marriages increase in the past year.
“Many couples admitted they got to
know each other through the site and
continued their relationship until they
got pregnant outside wedlock,” Haryanti
was quoted as saying by Antara state
news agency.
“The site is easy to access even to the
remote villages so intensive
relationships caused many teenagers to
get pregnant outside marriage,” she
said.
Haryanti said 130 under-age couples
have sought marriage licences at the
religious court this year compared to
120 couples in 2010.
The legal age for marriage in Indonesia
is 16 years for women and 19 years for
men.
A study by Yahoo! found that Indonesia
is the largest and fastest growing online
market in Southeast Asia, with online
usage growth of 48 percent in 2010,
compared to 22 percent in 2009.
Indonesia has more than 22 million
Facebook users.