In the Facebook age -- when digital "friends" are just a click away -- the distance between people seems to be shrinking, according to data the social network released on Monday night.
The adage maintains there are "six degrees of separation" between any two people on Earth, meaning that any two people would know each other through no more than six intermediary contacts.
On Facebook, however, the average user is only 4.74 degrees away from any other Facebooker.
"Thus, when considering even the most distant Facebook user in the Siberian tundra or the Peruvian rainforest, a friend of your friend probably knows a friend of their friend," Facebook wrote in a blog post about its findings.
That conclusion comes from a non-peer-reviewed study of 721 million active Facebook users, released by Facebook in collaboration with the Università degli Studi di Milano, the blog post says.