Do young people gain knowledge from social media? A doctor from TikTok has a plan to “flood” the Internet with science

The absence of scientists on the Internet means that other “experts” will fill the gap, spreading conspiracy narratives or pseudo-medical content, science popularizer and chemist, Dr. Eng. told PAP. Konrad Skotnicki, known as the Doctor from TikTok. He added that it is worth entering places where young people are present anyway.

– Apart from individual science popularizers, learning on the Internet (here understood as social networking sites – PAP) does not exist. The danger is that we are starting to have an advantage of conspiracy narratives or pseudo-medical contentand the scale increases. We have already had huge scandals involving the offering of dietary supplements and strange therapies for cancer treatment, or discouraging people from using chemotherapy – by charlatans who pose as doctors or scientists, often wearing lab coats. You can earn a lot from this, so there will be no less of this content. Perhaps this will be stopped by the ongoing quacks law, but in my opinion it cannot be completely banned. Therefore, in fact, the only way out of this situation is for scientists to counteract this information niche – said the chemist and popularizer in an interview with PAP.

He added that the Internet could be “flooded” with science, e.g. through university accounts. – If every Polish university were able to produce at least one TikTok or one video a day, we would have hundreds of – probably cool – scientific content – ​​said Skotnicki.

He also reminded that it is mainly the young generation who use social networking sites – including: Zetki – obtains information about the world.

The popularizer admitted that he was surprised by the surprise of older generations on this topic. – After all, younger people have always used different things than older people, it changes with each generation – for example, when television appeared and people started getting information from there, older people said that only newspapers were reliable. The way content and information is delivered has been changing for as long as civilization has existed. Young people simply consume content differently, he emphasized.

As he said, it is important not to force young people to change their habits, but to enter places where they are anyway – and in this way provide reliable information, e.g. quality scientific content.

– In my opinion, young people are extremely interested in science. School kills this passion in us, but – even as my example and the scope of my films show – an interesting presentation of science makes people really want to watch it and interact, regardless of age, Skotnicki pointed out.

In this context, he also referred to the difference between practicing and creating science and its popularization. – The main difference is that creating science is about expanding the areas of knowledge we have and going very deep into the niches of this knowledge. However, popularization needs to collect all this broad science and narrow it down to something that will stay in the mind of a person who does not need to know most of the details that a scientist should know – he said.

In his opinion the primary goal of popularization is therefore to make “society scientifically educated and know how to think using the scientific method.” And if, for example, someone comes across a conspiracy theory, they will know how to check and verify whether it is true.

Skotnicki emphasized that it is not about teaching something specific. – If we think about what we learned in science subjects in primary school – e.g. snail development cycles in biology, ways of reading salt in chemistry or equally slanted in physics – almost none of us remembers it, let's be honest. But what school teaches us is the ability to think in general. In my opinion, this should also be the goal of popularization – he concluded. (PAP)

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