Seven Degrees of Separation

When Facebook first started to kind of, be a thing, I would go to a friend’s profile to see who their friends were. There you could see mutual friends. Then if you clicked on a mutual friend you could see who were their friends, clicking on one of them you would see who was mutual friends with you. And then clicking on one of those, and on and on. I’m always surprised, even though it’s kind of cliché, that there are genuinely seven degrees of separation, or is it?

In 1929, Frigyes Karinthy (1887–1938), a Hungarian author, playwright, poet, journalist, and translator, coined the term “Six Degrees of Separation” and wrote a short story, Chains, that proposed that any two people could be connected through connections with only six connections to one another. (https://short-stories.co/@frigyeskarinthy/chains-3jglpe3gzdxw). Since then, there have been social experiments and trials to test this theory. Yes, for my social introverts, these trials require quite a bit of talking and social interaction. You have to find out who is connected how, like where do you live, where did you go to school or work, what are your hobbies. When you find out some of those things you find connections.

It doesn’t always take seven degrees. Some connections happen in far fewer degrees. I was producing a play that I wrote and I was looking for actors. I went online and posted a call. I got a response from a man who lived in my area who was interested in auditioning. When we started talking I learned that he was from my hometown (1) went to the same high school as some of my relatives (2). I mentioned that and he asked about my maiden name. No connection. I told him who my mother was and that was it. He went to school with my mother’s youngest sister (3). I called my aunt, she said they had been long-time friends.

It’s the math. the same math that we argued with our parents and teachers about not ever using again. Exponential growth: f(x) = ab^x

To simplify, if I know 10 people and each of those ten people know ten unique people, and each of those know ten unique people, by the time you get to the seventh level …

Level 1: 10 people (your initial group)

• Level 2: 10 × 10 = 100 people

• Level 3: 100 × 10 = 1,000 people

• Level 4: 1,000 × 10 = 10,000 people

• Level 5: 10,000 × 10 = 100,000 people

• Level 6: 100,000 × 10 = 1,000,000 people

• Level 7: 1,000,000 × 10 = 10,000,000 people

So, the seventh level has 10 million people!

There are roughly 1.4 million people living in San Diego in 2026. I might be connected in one way or another within those seven degrees to them all! Amazing.

I don’t live there anymore, but this week I was scrolling through Facebook posts and saw a friend from Jr. High School playing with her grandchildren. I was about to comment on the post when I saw that someone I met in the last 15 years or so was in her comments mentioning her great-grand niece. We had never really talked about connections or histories or anything, but one little post pulled my life into hers and as if I were five again, watching a magician perform a magic trick, I was amazed that it seems we all are connected. It is a small world, isn’t it?