Illustrating the “power” of networks with candy exchange

This paper describes an activity designed to illustrate the importance of networks and network structure as participants exchange candy with one another. The activity is suitable for 7–17 middle school-aged or older participants with no prior experience in network analysis. It requires a bag of individually wrapped candies and printed materials provided in this paper. During the activity, each participant is assigned a position in an unobserved network and, in a series of rounds, exchanges candy with their network partners. Following the activity, which includes multiple variants involving new players, positions, and resource distributions, discussion focuses on how the network shapes how much candy each participant has at the end. This discussion provides an opportunity to explore three lessons of increasing complexity: local knowledge, structural inequality, and measuring power.