It's that time again in February and March: the Audimax opens its doors for the KinderUniversität. On three afternoons, researchers will take the region's eight to twelve-year-olds on a journey of discovery into the world of science. The first lecture on 28 February will focus on social networks. Social scientist Prof Dr Sebastian Schnettler reveals exactly what the children can expect in an interview.
QUESTION: Mr Schnettler, you're still relatively new at the University of Oldenburg, and now you're about to give a KinderUni lecture with over 500 children - are you excited yet?
ANSWER: Yes, more excited than usual. Firstly, in the two years since I've been a professor in Oldenburg, I've never had such a large audience in 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 tell us about the world" - that's the title of your lecture. What can the eight to twelve-year-olds expect this afternoon?
ANSWER: We all use social networks: Friends, family, neighbours, teachers - these are all people we are connected to in our social networks. But is my network connected to that of my neighbour or that of the postwoman? Or to put it another way: are all people in Germany or even in the world actually connected to each other via their social networks? We will deal with 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 very relevant - for example, to predict how quickly rumours and unfortunately also diseases can spread on social networks. We also want to show the children that social and non-social networks, such as the road network or the neuronal network, have a very similar structure. In this way, we can also learn a lot 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 a little differently for your students...
ANSWER: Of course, I can usually assume that my larger students already know a bit more about the topic, as they have already attended other courses on this and similar topics with me and my colleagues. But that is of course an unfair comparison. The basic principle is actually the same: in order to familiarise someone with a topic - whether they are a pupil or a student - it is important to put yourself in their shoes in order to select 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?
ANSWER: There is a trend to prepare children and young people for possible 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, so there's no need to rush things. However, I think it is important to encourage children's natural curiosity by giving them an insight into science and research. This can increase confidence in scientific knowledge, which I think is particularly important in this day and age. For some years now, there has often been talk of the post-factual age, i.e. 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 and cannot be trusted. This is an essential skill not only for science itself, but for a life as enlightened citizens, which is what we want to raise our children to be.
QUESTION: Will you also be talking about research methods at the KinderUni?
ANSWER: The lecture will focus on content-related topics. But we will also be looking at the methods used in the past to gather information about social networks and how this is done today. The section of network research that I will be reporting on primarily uses quantitative methods. However, qualitative methods also play an important role in social network research as a whole.
QUESTION: Apart from the KinderUni, what end of projects are you currently researching?
ANSWER: Research on social networks is actually a current focus of my work. For example, we are currently investigating the networks of childless people. In the youngest birth cohorts, around 30 per cent of all people remain permanently childless. In the case of parents, relationships with their own children are usually particularly important throughout their lives, and many parents are supported by their adult children in old age. This inevitably raises the question of the situation of the childless. It turns out that they have smaller networks on average than people with children.
QUESTION: And did that surprise you?
Not really. On average, childless people have more friends and more contact with extended family than parents. In addition, childless people seem to be able to rely more on their friends and distant relatives for support than parents. In some aspects relating to support networks in old age, the childless do even better than parents whose adult children live far away. At the department, we conduct research on other topics in the areas of network, family and population research. In addition to these topics, it is important to us to integrate biological and social science explanations for human behaviour into our research.
