The family quiz
How well do you really know your family?
The family quiz asks you twelve questions about someone you think you know well, and shows you at the end how many of their stories you could actually tell. It takes a minute, costs nothing and needs no sign-up.
Why this matters
The quiz is a game, but the gap it shows is real. This is what research has found about family memory.
Roots for the next generation
Children who know their family's stories often stand more firmly in life.
At Emory University, children were asked whether they knew how their parents met, where their grandparents grew up and which setbacks the family had already come through. Those who knew more often had higher self-esteem, less anxiety and more to hold on to in hard times. Quizzing facts does not help. Telling the stories, again and again, does.
Marshall Duke and Robyn Fivush, 2008
Three generations, then silence
Spoken family memory rarely survives longer than that.
As long as grandparents, parents and children share their stories in person, a family has a living memory. After about 80 to 100 years it dissolves, because the people who carried it are gone. Voice, everyday life and small stories then fall into a gap, unless someone keeps them.
Aleida and Jan Assmann
Taken, but not kept
Most phone photos are never looked at again.
In Germany only about one in eight people has digitised keepsakes such as photos. A quarter regret having captured too little. Without the story behind them, pictures stay silent. Asking gives them a voice again.
Popsa and Censuswide, 2026. Civey and MyHeritage, 2025.
Not only the happy chapters
The strongest families also tell what went wrong.
Research distinguishes three ways families talk about themselves: always upwards, always downwards, or both. We had luck and loss, and we stayed together. It is exactly this mixed story that gives the feeling of belonging to something bigger.
Emory University and New York Times, 2013
Good for those who tell
People who tell their own life story often feel less alone with it.
When older people get to tell their life story at their own pace, studies show depressive symptoms drop. Quality of life and contentment rise. It takes no therapy setting, just someone who listens and time without a blank page.
Pinquart and Forstmeier, 2012
While someone is still listening
Contact with grandparents often breaks off once grandchildren are grown.
In Germany three generations almost never live under one roof. Grandparents often still see small grandchildren every week. With young adults that drops off sharply. What is not told in those years does not travel on by itself.
Destatis and the German Youth Institute
Often even the names are missing
Many people do not know all of their grandparents' names.
In Germany almost nobody knows the origin and meaning of their own family name. The gap is everyday life, not indifference. What is missing is usually not the family tree, but the stories of how these people were when they were young.
Civey and MyHeritage, 2025
How you remember stays with you
Families that share memories in detail pass on stability.
In New Zealand, mothers of toddlers were coached for a year to share memories openly and in rich detail. Twenty years later those same children told their lives more coherently, with fewer depressive symptoms and higher self-esteem. Not because someone filled in a family tree, but because the family told its stories.
Reese, University of Otago, 2021 and 2022
Questions about the family quiz
Twelve questions about someone in your family, for example: do you know how your parents met? You answer each one with yes, a little, or not yet. At the end you see how many stories you already know and how you compare to everyone else.
No. The quiz is free, needs no account and no email address. For the worldwide comparison we store only the anonymous score and the country, nothing else.
You choose at the start who you have in mind: mum, dad, grandmother or grandfather. The twelve questions adapt to that person. You can play again as often as you like with somebody else in mind.
Yes, free and without an account. On the embedding page you set a colour and a logo and get a snippet to copy. The same goes for our second quiz about the Mandela effect.
How many of their stories do you know?
Twelve questions, one minute, no account. At the end you see your result and get 50 questions for your next conversation.