Special to the NNPA from the Afro-American Newspaper

It’s a smaller world than you think, especially if you are a member of Facebook, according to researchers at the University of Milan.

According to their analysis of Facebook’s database, the average number of acquaintances separating us from someone we already know is 4.74, not the six degrees of separation dramatized by a film and play of the same name.

The Italian researchers announced Nov. 21 that their research refines the theory first advanced in 1967 by psychologist Stanley Milgram: that mankind is only six introductions away from a familiar person.

According to the New York Times, a month of analysis of Facebook data found the distance between two people on the Facebook network is even smaller than 4.74 introductions. “In the United States, where more than half of people over 13 are on Facebook, it was just 4.37 [steps].”

Calling the Facebook social graph a “small-world graph,” the study concluded, “… it is reassuring to see that our findings show that people are in fact only four worlds apart, and not five: when considering another person in the world, a friend of your friend knows a friend of their friend, on average.”

The data also show that the average Facebook friend count is 190, with about 10 percent of the users having fewer than 10 friends and 20 percent having fewer than 25.

However, 50 percent have over 100 friends. Also, the notes state, for 84 percent of users, “the median friend count of their friends is higher than their own friend count” — their friends have more friends than they do.