In February and March, it’s that time of year again: the Audimax opens its doors for the KinderUniversität. Over the course of three afternoons, researchers will take eight- to twelve-year-olds from the region on a journey of discovery into the world of science. The first lecture, on 28 February, will focus on social networks. In this interview, social scientist Prof. Dr Sebastian Schnettler reveals exactly what the children can expect.
QUESTION: Mr Schnettler, you’re still relatively new at the University of Oldenburg, and now you’re giving a Children’s University lecture to over 500 children – are you feeling a bit nervous?
ANSWER: Yes, more excited than usual. Firstly, in the two years since I became a professor in Oldenburg, I haven’t had such a large audience at my lectures. Secondly, I’ve been told that children are a particularly demanding audience. Dry lecture topics are an absolute no-go!
QUESTION: ‘What social networks reveal about the world’ – that’s the title of your lecture. What can the eight- to twelve-year-olds expect this afternoon?
ANSWER: Each of us is part of social networks: friends, family, neighbours, teachers – these are all people with whom we’re connected in our social networks. But is my network connected to my neighbour’s or to the postwoman’s? Or to put it another way: are all people in Germany – or even across the world – actually connected to one another through their social networks? We’ll be exploring these and similar questions in the lecture.
QUESTION: Why is it important to find answers to these questions?
ANSWER: The children will see that the answers to these questions are highly relevant – for example, in predicting how quickly rumours and, unfortunately, diseases can spread through social networks. We also want to show the children that social and non-social networks – such as the road network or the neural network – are structured in a very similar way. In this way, we can also learn a great deal about technical and biological relationships from social science network research. This makes the topic of social networks very exciting overall.
QUESTION: You would probably approach the topic slightly differently with your students...
ANSWER: With my university students, I can of course generally assume they already have a bit more knowledge on the subject, as they’ve already attended other modules on this and similar topics taught by me and my colleagues. But that’s obviously an unfair comparison. Actually, the basic principle is the same: to introduce someone to a topic – whether a school pupil or a student – it’s important to put yourself in their shoes and make a selection of interesting examples. And these examples are certainly different for eight- to twelve-year-olds than for adult students.
QUESTION: What motivates you to give children an insight into research as well?
ANSWER: There is, of course, a trend towards preparing children and young people for potential career paths at an early age. However, that is not what motivates me. After all, today’s eight- to twelve-year-olds still have plenty of time; there’s no need to rush things. I do, however, think it’s important to nurture children’s natural curiosity by giving them an insight into science and research. This can boost their trust in scientific findings, which strikes me as particularly important in this day and age. After all, for some years now there has been much talk of the ‘post-truth era’ – that is, the fact that some people no longer trust facts. Anyone who gains an insight into science and research learns how knowledge is produced and, above all, which sources can be trusted and which cannot. This is an essential skill not only for science itself, but also for living as enlightened citizens – which is, after all, what we want to raise our children to be.
QUESTION: Will you also be discussing research methods at the Children’s University?
ANSWER: The lecture will focus on the subject matter. But we will also look at the methods used in the past to gather information about social networks and how this is done today. The aspect of network research that I will be discussing does indeed rely primarily on quantitative methods. However, qualitative methods also play an important role in social network research as a whole.
QUESTION: Apart from the Children’s University: what projects are you currently researching?
ANSWER: Research into social networks is indeed a current focus of my work. For example, we are currently investigating the networks of childless people. In the most recent birth cohorts, around 30 per cent of all individuals remain childless for life. For parents, relationships with their own children naturally tend to be of particular importance throughout their lives, and many parents are supported by their adult children in old age. This inevitably raises the question of the situation of childless people. It appears that, on average, they have smaller networks than people with children.
QUESTION: And did that surprise you?
Not really. However, on average, childless people have more friends and more contact with their extended family than parents do. Furthermore, when it comes to potential support, childless people seem to be able to rely more on their friends and distant relatives than parents do. In some respects relating to support networks in old age, childless people even fare better than parents whose adult children live far away. In our research group, we are investigating further topics in the fields of network, family and population research. Across these topics, it is important to us to integrate biological and social science explanations for human behaviour into our research.
