How Snapchat Filters Increase Divorce Cases in KSA

Social media are playing a decisive role in the expeditiously transforming Saudi society. During the journey of being a social media powerhouse, Saudi Arabia has become the biggest national markets for Snapchat and YouTube in the world.

According to Saudi Arabia Social Media Statistics 2021, “the global rise in social media amounts to 9.2% annually and Saudi Arabia leads the race among other nations with an exponential annual growth rate of 8.7%.”

However, behind the prosperous image of progression and advanced technology, lay high rates of divorce and deception.

Replacing the first-look before marriage due to COVID-19 restriction, Saudi girls turn to sending their pictures to their husbands-to-be via Snapchat, using different filters that make them look almost “perfect.”

A few hours after the Saudi couple's marriage, the groom resorts to divorce when discovering that his bride deceived him by sending a picture of her that looked totally different compared to reality, as if she is not the one he was chatting with.

 

'I Didn’t Mean That'

After her divorce, a Saudi girl said that her husband was deceived when he first saw her because, according to him, she looked different from the picture he received before the engagement. “I didn't mean to marry through deception and fraud,” said the Saudi girl.

Coronavirus restrictions pushed many Saudi girls wishing to marry to rely on virtual relationships with their husband-to-be, so instead of the so-called “Halal first look,” they often send their photos with filters, making their facial features look different from the reality.

This directly contributed to raising divorce rates because of these filtered photos that are considered a fraud as they do not reflect the “real” looks of the future wife.

Saudi girls send their photos using the “Filters” provided by the Snapchat application to "purify and beautify" the photos, which gives a look that may be unrealistic about the persons themselves.

This terribly upset Saudi men the day of the engagement, when discovering that their “supposed wives” are not exactly the ones they talked to before marriage.

Specialists believe that the use of the Snapchat filter to improve facial features has become “a frightening phenomenon,” and what makes it more dangerous is its use to replace the “legitimate look” or the “halal look” before marriage.

In the same context, Saudi family advisor, Dr. Walid al-Saadoun, said that “Snapchat filters technology is one of the negative social phenomena that are used in engagements instead of the 'halal look' with the aim of exaggeratingly beautifying women or men and changing their real physical features, and therefore does not reflect the reality.”

The doctor added that this technology “spread significantly with the beginning of the Coronavirus crisis to form a preliminary agreement between the suitor and the fiancée.”

 

Simply Divorced!

According to Global Media Insight, Saudi Arabia actually has a total population of around 35 million, 79.25% among them are super active on social media.

This has thrusted Saudi Arabia to the top position on the international social media charts.

This considerable KSA social media presence in the world has led Saudi people to rely on social applications even to get married and virtually legitimate the so-called "halal first look" before marriage, especially amid the current pandemic restrictions but the results were not good at all.

According to Middle East in 24, the General Authority for Statistics reported that the divorce rate for the Saudi population increased by 13.8 percent in 2020 compared to the previous year.

Using a pseudonym, Rima, a Saudi girl who was shortly divorced after her marriage, said that she did not believe that using the Snapchat filter would quickly end her marriage, the Middle East in 24 reports.

Rima added that after her ex-husband asked her to send her picture, and so she did. “We used to take pictures using Snapchat and I did not mean to change my facial features, because marriage is our future that we cannot start with deception,” she said.

The Saudi woman continued to say that “at first, I received many comments from him about the difference between my real features and the pictures I sent before marriage, but I did not expect that this would end our marriage.”

For her part, Sherine al-Ghazali, a Bahraini lawyer said that “cases of marriage in a legitimate way are not widespread in Bahrain and other Gulf countries, unlike Saudi Arabia, given that most of the marriages are based on a normal engagement and established relationships, but I had one divorce case in Bahrain similar to what is happening in KSA, when a man demanded divorce procedures because he could not accept his wife in real life, explaining that he saw a completely different woman from the photo she sent him via social media applications,” the Middle East in 24 quoted.

 

Still Struggle

Saudi Arabia is trying to send an image of modernity and improvement to the outside world. But, many of these attempts and changes are actually superficial and fake.

In her interview with Al-Estiklal, Human Rights Activist Rayda Belaaj argued that divorcing a woman just because she is not as beautiful as her husband thought is absolutely disrespectful, undervaluing Saudi women and making men, again, the only ones who control and take decisions.

“The women’s rights movement is still at the heart of many political and social struggles in Saudi Arabia, despite the Saudi regime’s attempts to change this perception,” Belaaj added.

The human rights activist pointed out that “the women's situation in Saudi Arabia proves to be far more complicated in an 'authoritarian religious monarchy.'

"The arrest and the severe mistreatment during the detention of the feminist political activists who led the anti-guardianship campaign in 2018 have seriously exposed the real image of MBS, who has vigorously promoted himself as a reformist just to impress the international communities,” she concluded.