By South China Morning Post | Created at 2025-04-04 06:21:39 | Updated at 2025-04-05 00:01:48
17 hours ago
Elderly couples are divorcing at alarming rates in Malaysia as phone and social media addiction drives a wedge in communication and intimacy among them, according to a counsellor who has handled such cases.
Independent counsellor Hushim Salleh told This Week in Asia that half of all senior couples – mostly from the country’s richest state of Selangor where Hushim is based – who had sought counselling with him ended up in divorce over the past three years.
Wives routinely complained of the lack of interaction as their husbands were busy doomscrolling through their smartphones for most of the day, he said.
“I can say 90 per cent of the time it is the wife who will ask for a divorce. Their husbands will just sit on the side and play with their phones, but imagine in one day there are 24 hours. What do you think your wife feels? Lonely,” Hushim told This Week in Asia.
Hushim, a 35-year veteran in the field, said social media addiction was a key complaint raised during counselling sessions at his practice in Selangor over the past three years, where he typically handled between three and five cases of marital breakdown among elderly couples a month.
There are over 28 million unique social media accounts in Malaysia, accounting for more about 82 per cent of the country’s population of 34 million, according to a 2024 study by online intelligence firm Meltwater and US-based creative agency We Are Social.
