In a report released on its blog on Thursday, social network Facebook highlighted the fact that the 'human social world' is steadily shrinking; with people having come much closer than the traditional "six degrees of separation."

The "six degrees of separation" theory was first introduced by Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in 1929. The theory asserts that people across the world are separated by "six degrees" --- that is, each person on Earth could be connected to any other person through 'six' links in the chain of acquaintances.

However, in its blog post, Facebook has asserted that the world has become a much smaller place, in terms of connecting to one another by tracing a path through acquaintances. Facebook claims that "each person in the world" is separated from any other person by '3.57 degrees of separation.'

Facebook's calculation that two people across the world are separated by "an average of three and a half other people" is relevant only for connections between the nearly 1.59 billion Facebook users worldwide. The calculation does not take into account that more than 5 billion people who do not have Facebook accounts.

According to Facebook's data team, the social network's "collective 'degrees of separation' have shrunk over the past five years." Drawing attention to the fact that the number of Facebook users has nearly doubled since 2011, the Facebook data team said: ". we've grown more interconnected, thus shortening the distance between any two people in the world."