The Six Degrees of Separation Concept was originally thought up by Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy. In his 1929 short story “Láncszemek” (“Chains”) he suggested that any two persons are distanced by at most six friendship links (Backstrom et al, 2012). Several experiments have been carried out since then to test the theory, arguably the most famous being Stanley Milgram’s ‘Small-World Experiment’ which took place in 1967. Milgram sent letters to random citizens in Omaha, Nebraska, and Wichita, Kansas. Enclosed was a letter with the details of the study, the basic details of a target contact person in Boston, Massachusetts, a roster in which the person could write their own name and business reply cards pre-addressed to Harvard University. The citizens were instructed as follows; if they knew the target person, they could send the letter to them directly. However, if they didn’t (which was far more likely) they were to forward the package to a friend or family member who would have a better chance of knowing them. Any packages to reach Boston would contain the roster of the route in which it had taken and how many links it took to get there. For those that didn’t the break in the chain could be identified via the business cards they would receive. When some packets only took one or two links to reach the destination others took nine or ten. However, the average number of links it took for the packet to reach its destination was 5.5-6. Thus the research concluded that there were no more than six links to connect the average two people within the United States.
Almost 50 years on how has this number changed? It is widely argued that this number has decreased from six to four as a result of the unprecedented development of social media. Some argue it is even lower again. In 2011 research conducted by Facebook concluded that of its 750 million users at the time, 92% were connected through 4.74 friends. According to Research at Facebook, the average user today is connected through three and a half degrees. In fact, users can be shown their personal degrees of separation to other Facebook users. Mine is currently 3.34 meaning that I am connected to 1.59 billion people by almost half of what the original theory suggested. Facebook has undoubtedly had a major impact on Karinthy’s concept. Over 20% of the world’s population are currently active on Facebook. That still leaves 80% that are not. However, if one of those people who do not have a FB account knew someone who does, there is just one degree between that person and hundreds of FB users. Through a few degrees more, the floodgates potentially open to over a billion other FB users.
To give an example, last summer I spent three weeks travelling through the Balkans. I stayed in hostels along the way and met hundreds of people from all over the world, most of whom I added On Facebook. Now there is just one degree between me and people from Brazil, Iceland, Africa, Australia etc. but what’s more for all my friends and family on and off Facebook, there are just two degrees between all these people, or between me and all their friends and family.
To convey my point I have written two processing sketches. The first is to represent the degrees of separation between strangers before social media was invented. This visualisation shows the yellow dot at the top as the starting point, the red dot at the bottom the destination point, and the light blue circles representing the degrees it took to link the two.
As you can see from the image it took 12 degrees to link the two dots.
My second sketch is very similar to the first. The only difference is that of the 28 dots, I have connected 8 via four random lines. These lines are to represent a link made across a long distance via social media.
It is evident that although neither of the two linked dots are connected via the social media line, the distance between them significantly decreased from twelve decimals, to four.
Karinthy’s theory in 1929 and studies over the following fifty years or more, explored a fascinating concept regarding human connections. Before the advent of modern technology the Six Degrees of Separation concept was well-established in the fields of Sociology, Mathematics and Physics. With The rapid ongoing advancement in the use of Social Media through a wide variety of sites and apps, the findings of traditional studies may now be open to fresh investigation. It is clear that the degree of separation is decreasing. If the opportunity arises, it is my hope to research this in my future studies and perhaps to explore how small the number has become.
(As I was unable to embed the sketches into WordPress I have made videos of the sketches in use which can be seen bellow.)
Bibliography
Backstrom, L., Boldi, P., Rosa, M., Ugander, J., Vigna, S. ‘Four Degrees of Separation’, (January 2012). pp. 1.
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