Six Degrees of Separation And 1000 Miles of Distance
Article: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/19/upshot/facebook-county-friendships.html?mtrref=www.google.com
In the article, the author discusses the analyses performed by researchers in relation to ties on Facebook. While some may assume like-minded individuals are more likely to be connected, the data shows distance is the main predictor of whether or not two individuals are connected.
In other words, while individuals in New York and San Francisco may share more in common in their values, politics, and economics, individuals in New York would instead be more connected to those in New Jersey. Thus, regions and distances still, even in the age of the Internet, play a massive role in who people know. This suggests users of the Internet still primarily make their connections through school, work, and their communities instead of online.
Retirement communities, such as those in Southwest Florida, have a higher relative probability of being connected with individuals in the Northeast and the Midwest than being connected with individuals on the West coast. This largely stems from those who left colder climates to come to Florida and the states represented in the graph in the article correlate with other statistics representing which states supply the most transplants to Florida.
However, with this knowledge, it’s interesting to study how the Small-World Phenomenon plays out in the real world. For example, Milgram performed an experiment where participants had to deliver a letter to someone knowing only their name and address within their community. For those successful, the process required a median of 6 steps. This led to the formation of the “six degrees of separation”.
Two main takeaways occurred with this study: first, short paths in large social networks are common and secondly, people are effective at collectively finding these short paths. In relation to the recent data analyses in the New York Times article, it is entirely possible the experiment could be replicated with similar results in a retirement community like Charlotte County in Southwest Florida and a county in in upstate New York as the two counties share a high relative probability of being connected to each other.
I would be willing to conjecture over a vast distance from New York to Florida, the six degrees of separation might turn into eight or nine degrees instead. However, the possibility of the letter being passed successfully between the two counties to find its recipient still exists in spite of the distance.