Six handshakes give way to three

It seems time has come to revise the old concept of “Six degrees of separation”, which we traditionally call the “ Six Handshakes ”. A recent study by the mobile operator O2 shows that in the modern world strangers are at much shorter “distances” from each other than ever before.

According to the analysis of the information collected, the average person in modern society is connected by three “handshakes” with an absolutely unfamiliar person within a social group. Classically, there are three of them: family, friends and work.

O2 asked people of three different age groups (18-25, 35-45, 55+) to make contact with a random person from anywhere (another country / continent) using only personal contacts. Combining their common interests, the participants were able to “connect” to an accidental person in the course of 3 “handshakes”.

For the first time, the term “Six degrees of separation” was used by Stanley Milgram in 1967. By this phrase, he meant that the connection between a random person and a random person within the planet Earth is possible through 6 investigative links. In the modern world, of course, this rule no longer works - we are all victims of active Internet socialization, but no one could have imagined that the number of “handshakes” has halved.