Kevin Bacon

By Debra Rich Gettleman

Dear reader,

I’m trying to reach Kevin Bacon. If any of you know anyone who knows anyone who knows him, would you be so kind as to forward this email to them.

That’s basically the premise of the whole 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon game. But you might not realize that this popular social experiment game was based on a 1967 Harvard University experiment by Professor Stanley Milgram. Milgram sent 300 identical letters across the US with instructions to pass the letter to someone within their social circle with the intent to eventually reach the intended recipient.

Amazingly, Milgram discovered that the social paths connecting people were typically six handshakes away. And this matters because it extends beyond sheer curiosity. These short pathways define our social network and explain our speedy ability to spread information, ideas, and even fads. This also applies to viruses (thank you Covid). It only takes 6 infection cycles for a pathogen to traverse the globe.

A recent paper published in Physical Review X by researchers from Israel, Spain, Italy, Russia, Slovenia, and Chile sheds light on the reasons for this phenomenon. You see, people seek prominence in social networks, so they go for connections that increase their social position. But networking takes energy and time, so folks have to consider the cost-benefit of breaking old ties and forming new ones. In truth, we’re all just trying to establish social equilibrium.

Israeli Professor Baruch Barzel

Israeli Professor Baruch Barzel, lead author of the study, and a professor at Bar-Ilan University, explains in a statement, “When we did the math, we discovered an amazing result: this process always ends with social paths centered around the number six. Each individual acts independently without knowing the network as a whole, yet this self-driven game shapes the structure of the entire network, leading to the small world phenomenon and the recurring pattern of six degrees,”