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The manifesto
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What research says
My manifesto comes from my own experience. Two well-known studies reach the same conclusion by other routes.
The longest study of adult life
The Harvard Study of Adult Development has followed a group of 724 men since 1938, later adding their wives and children. Its director, Robert Waldinger, sums up decades of data this way: good relationships keep us happier and healthier.
Source: Robert Waldinger, Harvard Study of Adult Development ↗
Relationships matter as much as health
A review of 148 studies covering more than 300,000 people found that those with solid social relationships had about a 50% greater likelihood of survival over the period observed. The authors compare the effect to quitting smoking.
For The Human Network this means something simple: relationships are the centre, and everything else is there to support them.
Relationships as a health matter
In recent years two major institutions have placed human relationships at the centre of public health. It is the same starting point as this manifesto.
1 in 6people worldwide experience loneliness, according to the WHO.Source: WHO, 2025
871,000deaths a year are linked to loneliness, around 100 every hour.Source: WHO, 2025
+29% / +32%risk of heart disease and stroke when social connection is poor.Source: U.S. Surgeon General, 2023
- WHO report · 2025 From loneliness to social connection The report of the WHO Commission on Social Connection, published on 30 June 2025, setting out a path to more connected societies. Source: World Health Organization · Open ↗
- US report · 2023 · PDF Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation The U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory on the healing effects of social connection and community, with a national strategy built on six pillars. Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services · Open ↗
- 1The person
- 2The bond
- 3Trust
- 4The network
- 5More strength for everyone
The Human Network starts from here: helping people grow stronger through the bonds they have.
My network
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How a network of people is shaped
No network is uniform. There are a few people very close to us, and many others further away who matter in a different way.
Dunbar’s circles
Anthropologist Robin Dunbar observed that our stable relationships average around 150 and are arranged in circles: about 5 people in the closest one, then 15, 50 and 150, counting the inner circles too.
Source: MIT Technology Review, 2016 ↗
The strength of weak ties
An experiment on LinkedIn, with more than 20 million people over five years, showed that new job opportunities come mostly from moderately weak ties: people we know, but not that closely.
Source: Rajkumar et al., Science, 2022 ↗
The network above holds people from every circle. In The Human Network each one matters, in a different way.
Three degrees of influence
What we feel reaches further than we think. A study lasting twenty years followed how well-being passes from one person to another inside a network.
The Framingham study
James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis followed 4,739 people from 1983 to 2003. A person’s happiness turned out to be linked to that of people up to three degrees away, that is, to the friends of their friends’ friends.
In The Human Network every point also reaches people it does not know: a gesture towards one person reaches their network too.
Something here made you think of someone, or of me?
Write to me →