Culture

You Know More People Than You Think You Do

New research suggests that our social networks are a lot wider than we realize.
James Beard/Flickr

“3.57 degrees of Kevin Bacon” doesn’t have the same ring as “6 degrees,” but according to a recent report from Facebook, it might be more accurate.

The social network analyzed its 1.59 billion users and determined that each person is connected to every other person by an average of 3.57 degrees of separation. Translation: everyone in the Facebook-sphere is “friends of a friend of a friend of a friend (or so),” the Facebook data scientist Moira Burke tells CityLab.