in a run-down building with leaking toilets, broken furniture and smelly cafeterias, they’ll be more likely to get lower grades. If your neighborhood is unsafe, it is not even necessary for you to be a victim of violence to feel the impact. High school students who feel unsafe are more likely to be depressed, be aggressive and achieve less academically. If your family and friends have low aspirations, yours can suffer too. If they have not achieved educational success, a college education, or a job, chances are you won’t either. As a result, you will be less likely to have someone to help you make connections, to improve your life circumstances, or to rely on in a crisis.
Social connectedness is so powerful that, according to new studies, the people you know and the people they know that you do not know have an impact on you through a kind of “social contagion.” Nicholas Christakis captivated audiences with his TED Talks on the subject. His research on how obesity spreads through social networks tells a compelling story. If you have an obese friend, for example, you are at a 57% increased chance of being obese eventually. That risk increases to 71% if the friend is the same sex. If you have mutual friends, the risk increases to 171% . Other studies show that food and alcohol choices are influenced with networks as well. Even if you
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Dunbar suggests that this number has been our limit as humans for millennia. As evidence, he cites examples of Neolithic villages, English villages from the eleventh century, studies of tribal societies and military units dating back to the Roman Era. He also references communities of Hutterites and the Amish in North America today which split up when the group size reaches 150, having noticed that mutual obligation and reciprocity breaks down in a group larger than