"How many continents are there?" seems like it should have one clean answer, taught the same way everywhere. It doesn't. Continents are a geographic and cultural convention, not a strictly scientific classification, and different countries and institutions genuinely teach different models.
The main models
- Seven continents — Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia/Oceania, Europe, North America, South America. Common in the US, UK, and much of the English-speaking world.
- Six continents (combined Eurasia) — Africa, Antarctica, Eurasia, Australia/Oceania, North America, South America. Treats Europe and Asia as one landmass, since they aren't actually separated by water — the "boundary" between them is a cultural and historical line, not a physical one.
- Six continents (combined Americas) — Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Europe, Oceania, the Americas (North and South America treated as one continent, since they're joined by the Isthmus of Panama). Common across much of Latin America, Spain, Portugal, France, Greece, and Iran.
- Five continents — combines both of the above simplifications: Africa, Eurasia, the Americas, Australia/Oceania, and Antarctica (or excludes Antarctica entirely, since it has no permanent population — this version is also the basis for the five interlocking rings of the Olympic flag).
None of these is "the" correct model — they're different, equally valid ways of grouping landmasses, and which one gets taught is largely a matter of regional convention rather than geographic fact.
Continents vs. regions vs. the UN geoscheme
Separately from continents, the United Nations Statistics Division maintains its own classification — the UN M49 geoscheme— which groups the world into regions and subregions (for example, "Sub-Saharan Africa," "Southeast Asia," "Western Europe") for statistical reporting. It's not trying to answer "how many continents are there"; it's a practical tool for grouping countries so international statistics can be compared and aggregated consistently. This site's country data uses continent and subregion labels in that same spirit — practical groupings for organizing information, not a claim about the one true geographic boundary.
The model Globe Streaks uses
The continent quizzeson this site use the six-continent model that splits the Americas into North America and South America, rather than combining Europe and Asia into Eurasia — the most common convention in English-language geography education. If you learned a different model growing up, that's not a mistake on either side; it's a genuinely different, equally legitimate convention.
Sources: UN Statistics Division, "Standard Country or Area Codes for Statistical Use (M49)"; National Geographic Society, "Continent."