3 Degrees of Social Impact is the new 6 Degrees of Separation
On Nov 22, 2011, a team of scientists at Facebook and the University of Milan released a study based on 721 million Facebook users with a theoretical connectivity of 69 billion friendships. The study showed that any two individuals in the world can be connected through 4.74 acquaintances. Hmmm? That sounds a lot better than 6 degrees of separation!
Scientists have been conducting these social network experiments for decades. But in 1967, a psychologist named Stanley Milgram set the standard when he conducted an experiment with 160 people in Omaha, Nebraska. It was seminal work that preceded the Facebook phenomenon.
As part of his Harvard dissertation, Milgram asked participants to forward a package to a friend who they believed could bring it closer to a stockbroker in Boston; the subject of Milgram’s experiment. Each participant received instructions to mail a folder to a friend they knew on a first name basis. Each person passed along the same instructions, hoping an acquaintance might know Milgram’s stockbroker.
The experiment sounds like an old-fashioned chain letter, but Milgram tracked progress through return postcards in each letter. There was an average of six degrees of separation between the original sender and the target recipient in Boston who received the package.
Fast forward to 1990 >> American playwright, John Guare, wrote a Pulitzer-Prize nominated play titled Six Degrees of Separation, inspired by a real-life con artist named David Hampton. The 1993 film based on Guare’s play is awesome too, starring a young Will Smith, Donald Sutherland, and Stockard Channing. The story proposes that any two of us are connected at most by five others.
The Origin of Kevin Bacon’s 6 Degrees
In 1994, actor Kevin Bacon joked in an interview that he had seemingly worked with everybody in Hollywood, or at least someone who’d worked with someone. Sure enough, the social buzz exploded that year when four college students from Albright (Craig Fass, Christian Gardner, Brian Turtle, Mike Ginelli) invented a party game called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. The students began speculating on the number of films Bacon had appeared in and how everyone was connected to the famous star one way or another.
The students then wrote a letter to talk-show host Jon Stewart, telling him that Kevin Bacon was the center of the entertainment universe in their “silly party game.” And just like that, the students found themselves appearing on The Jon Stewart Show to explain the cocept.
Before long, a book and trivia game were released and Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon was a cultural juggernaut. In 2007, Bacon also formed a non-profit called SixDegrees.org. His organization teamed up with a popular charity called Network for Good to power a website that linked users to over a million charities. You’ll tell friends, they’ll tell friends, and soon enough you’ll have a movement. But how can we channel all this wisdom for social impact on a more practical level? Can we improve on 6 degrees or the 4.74 separation phenomenon noted in the Milan-Facebook study!
3 Degrees of Social Impact
I think we’re closer to 3 degrees than 6 or even 4.74. Each of us has the ability to make a greater social impact than ever toward simply by tapping our individual spirit and a few friends or co-workers. For every dollar earned, perhaps you’ll give a small portion to charity. If you own a business, maybe you’ll donate products or services with each sale.
87% of us have access to food, shoes, shelter, education, medicine, and clean water. 1 in 7 are hungry. Kids are at risk. Millions are physically and emotionally challenged. There are communities without schools and schools without books. Disaster victims need our help (Earthquakes, Tsunamis, Typhoons, Hurricanes). Medical research needs our support (Malaria, Cancer, AIDS, Austism).
From students to celebrities, the ability to make a difference has never been easier. Non-profits such as KIVA enable anyone to lend as little as $25 to small business owners in third-world countries. Educators like Salman Khan, Founder of Khan Academy are posting thousands of free lectures in math, science, and history, making quality education more accessible than ever. Blake Mycoskie, Founder of TOMS Shoes spearheaded a one-for-one business model that encourages companies to give something back with each sale, like a pair of shoes to a child in need.
If you’re part of a club or member organization, you can join forces with two other clubs. How about 3 schools or 3 companies working together for a cause? How about 3 charities pooling their networks for a giving event? You don’t need to be famous or have billions of dollars like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to give back. You don’t have to be a diplomatic leader like Bill Clinton or a celebrity like Oprah or Sean Penn. You don’t even need to worry about 6 or 4.74 degrees of separation Just think 3 degrees of social impact. Together, we can all make a difference!
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