Facbook Busts "Six Degrees Of Separation" Myth

Everyone knows about the 6 degrees of separation (or of Kevin Bacon). The idea is that you can take any two people in the world, and connect them through no more than six total acquaintances. Well, the website that knows more about your friends than you do seems to think we're all a lot closer that we previously thought.

Today is "Friends Day." If you're not familiar with the made-up holiday, then you're not the only one. Facebook just recently made this holiday up, to celebrate 12 years of people saying "I don't really care enough to say anything, so here's a thumbs-up." Part of their celebration includes debunking the six degrees of separation.

Since Facebook has tabs on 1.59 billion people, they decided to do some research of their own, and figure out how many degrees of separation we really have. As it turns out, there are, on average, only 3.57 degrees of separation between any two people on the social media site.

To further prove their point, in the article where they discuss the math behind the answer, a couple of Facebook employees are listed. Personally, I'm just 3.17 degrees away from Mark Zuckerberg, and 2.92 degrees away from Sheryl Sandberg. That's a little disappointing, considering I used to be direct friends with Tom from Myspace.

Source: Facebook