 6. Degrees of Separation The theory that everyone and everything is six or fewer degrees are steps away from each other. You might be familiar with Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist best known for his experiments on obedience at Yale, which involved delivering electric shocks in a so-called memory test with increasing intensities. In 1967, Milgram coined the phrase Six Degrees of Separation after conducting his Small World experiment describing that growing social networks had a world-trinking effect. The experiment tested how many steps it took for a package to be delivered from the West Coast in the U.S. to a stockbroker in Boston by having one acquaintance mail it to another. He found that it only took an average of six steps to reach Boston in the 1960s. But what about now, in the 21st century, where social networking sites dominate the Internet? If you use LinkedIn or Facebook, you've seen the Six Degrees of Separation network. LinkedIn uses a connection system where individual profiles in the People You May Know section are labeled as second or third connections, with a map showing how that person is related to you through your first connections, who are acquaintances already on your friends' list. Finally, Facebook shows a mutual friend's count and now has a function that enables you to message friends of friends if enough shared contacts exist. It used to be that we were all just Six Degrees of Separation apart, connecting anyone to anyone else by a finding a friend who knew someone else, who knew someone else, and so on. But research conducted by Facebook and the University of Milan in 2011 shows that the number of degrees is now as small as four. 721 million active users and 69 billion friendships were analyzed for one month, and the results were as follows. 99.6% of all pairs of users are connected by paths within five degrees, 92 are connected by only four degrees. The average distance between all people on Facebook in 2008 was 5.28 degrees, and in 2011 it lowered to 4.74. Who knows what the number would be now? The small, small world. So what do you think about this theory? Do you think social networking decreases the number of degrees needed to reach someone? Let us know in the comments below. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to check out our website and other social media for more content. And don't forget to subscribe! Thanks for watching!