The idea of six degrees of separation has been around since in the 1920s and the idea is that everyone and everything is six or fewer steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person in the world. In 2008, researchers at Microsoft found that the theory was pretty much correct. We’ve continued with this idea despite the phenomenal affect social media has had on our lives but now Facebook have calculated a brand new degree of separation, and it’s pretty small.
Of course, there are 7 billion people on this earth and only about 1.5 billion monthly Facebook users and said Facebook users aren’t representative of humanity as a whole, but it is a good place to start if you want to try and figure out how people are connected on such a large scale. People are often Facebook friends with not only close friends but acquaintances and colleagues and a number of other relationships covered under the term ‘degrees of separation’. So Facebook ran some tests and they found that there are only 3.57 degrees of separation between any two Facebook users.
Facebook also ran the same test in 2011, when they had 700 million Facebook users and found that the degree of separation was 3.74. Therefore, the more the number grows, the lower the degree of separation. Zuckerberg aims to have 5 billion Facebook users by 2030 so one can only imagine how low the degree of separation will be should that dream come true. The best thing to come from this research? We are basically 3.57 degrees of separation away from Leonardo DiCaprio, Beyoncé and Idris Elba. The worst thing? We’re 3.57 degrees of separation away from Donald Trump. You can find out your degree of separation here.
Holly Martin
