As far as I know the number of friends or connections a person has has been relatively stable in the last few centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%2

As far as I know the number of friends or connections a person has has been relatively stable in the last few centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number It is not absolutely uncontested but I haven't seen any evidence that the number of connections people have nowadays has increased. > The increased mobility of our society (both social and physical) has blurred and removed many of the old divides (class, vocation, religion) and we're still working on removing others. I see more of an atomisation of society into ever smaller groups of minorities that fight each other and more class divide than ever. One other symptom of this is the radicalisation that we see particularly with young people. 20 years ago it would have been unfathomable to me to even imagine that teenagers born in the West would decide to join some crazy group that cuts of heads and throws gays off tall buildings.