How bad are video games for your grades?

Chinese students provide an answer
中国学生给出答案

2024年10月24日 05:34 上午

ARRIVING ON THE magical continent of Teyvat, you and your twin are attacked and separated by an unwelcoming god. When you regain consciousness, you set off in search of your lost sibling, exploring seven beguiling worlds (one of which resembles a Chinese national park). Along the way you team up with other heroes, blessed with elemental powers. One can cross lakes by freezing the water beneath his feet. Another can float on air currents of his own creation. Together, your travelling party must fight monsters, solve puzzles and plunder treasure chests.

抵达神奇的提瓦特大陆后，你和你的双胞胎遭到了一位不受欢迎的神明的攻击并被分开。当你恢复意识时，你开始寻找失去的兄弟姐妹，探索七个迷人的世界（其中一个类似于中国国家公园）。一路上你会与其他拥有元素力量的英雄组队。人可以通过冻结脚下的水来穿越湖泊。另一个可以漂浮在他自己创造的气流上。你的旅行队伍必须一起对抗怪物、解决谜题并掠夺宝箱。

Released in September 2020 by a Chinese developer, the online game “Genshin Impact” became a big hit. A year after its release, it was attracting more than 13m monthly users in China and more than 50m worldwide. The success of this home-grown creation and others like it was not, however, a source of great pride for China’s government. It worries that gaming addiction poses a threat to teenagers. In 2021 a state-run newspaper complained that online games were contributing to myopia, bad grades and alienation. They are often described as “spiritual opium”, it said.

中国开发商于2020年9月推出的网络游戏《原神》一炮而红。发布一年后，它在中国吸引了超过 1300 万月度用户，在全球吸引了超过 5000 万用户。然而，这一本土创造和其他类似创造的成功并没有让中国政府感到非常自豪。它担心游戏成瘾对青少年构成威胁。2021 年，一家官方报纸抱怨网络游戏导致近视、成绩不佳和疏远。报告称，它们经常被描述为“精神鸦片”。

In 2019 China’s government limited children under 18 to an hour and a half of online game-time a day during the school week. In 2021 it went further, permitting only three hours a week. The limits were part of a crackdown on consumer-tech firms that horrified entrepreneurs and investors. Still, parents around the world will be keen to know whether they did any good.

2019年，中国政府将18岁以下儿童在学校每周的在线游戏时间限制为每天一个半小时。2021 年，规定更进一步，每周只允许游玩三个小时。这些限制是对消费科技公司打击的一部分，令企业家和投资者感到震惊。尽管如此，世界各地的父母仍然渴望知道他们是否做了任何好事。

Those curious will find some clues in a remarkable new study by Panle Jia Barwick and Chao Fu of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as Siyu Chen of Jinan University and Teng Li of Sun Yat-Sen University. It sheds light on the impact of gaming (and other mobile-phone habits) on the grades, well-being and job-market success of Chinese students. To tease out such effects, the researchers make use of the government’s imposition of time limits and the arrival of Genshin Impact. They show that mobile-phone apps are contagious: students will use their phone more if roommates do. The study also demonstrates some digital harm: grades suffer along with a graduate’s initial job offers.

那些好奇的人会在威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校的 Panle Jia Barwick 和 Chao Fu 以及暨南大学的 Siyu Chen 和中山大学的 Teng Li 进行的一项引人注目的新研究中找到一些线索。它揭示了游戏（和其他手机习惯）对中国学生的成绩、幸福感和就业市场成功的影响。为了弄清楚这些影响，研究人员利用了政府施加的时间限制和原神的到来。他们表明，手机应用程序具有传染性：如果室友使用手机，学生就会更多地使用手机。该研究还表明了一些数字化危害：毕业生的成绩和最初的工作机会都会受到影响。

What sets the study apart is the data. The authors have access to the university records of thousands of undergraduates who enrolled at a mid-tier university in an unnamed southern province from 2018 to 2020. More remarkable, they also have access to mobile-phone records—calls made, apps used, locations visited—for millions of subscribers. Because customers provide their national-identity number when they register for a phone, the researchers can match the university records of 6,430 students to their phone data. By looking at their calls, they can map out their friendship networks, even before they arrived at university. And by consulting course schedules and class locations, they are also able to chart where students were meant to be each hour of the week.

这项研究的与众不同之处在于数据。作者可以访问 2018 年至 2020 年间在南方某省份的一所中等大学就读的数千名本科生的大学记录。更值得注意的是，他们还可以访问手机记录——拨打的电话、使用的应用程序、位置访问过——数百万订阅者。由于客户在注册手机时需要提供国民身份证号码，因此研究人员可以将 6,430 名学生的大学记录与他们的手机数据进行匹配。通过查看他们的电话，他们甚至可以在进入大学之前就规划出他们的友谊网络。通过查阅课程安排和上课地点，他们还能够绘制出学生一周中每个小时的上课地点。

The data provide a detailed portrait of undergraduate life. Students spend 93 hours a month on mobile-phone apps, including 12 hours on games. But these averages mask wide variation. A third of the students use their phones at least 210 hours a month—equivalent to 7 hours a day—and a third spend 30 hours a month on games. After the arrival of Genshin Impact, the average student arrived at their study hall 18 minutes later and returned to the dorm 25 minutes earlier, according to the data from their phones. Those treasure chests were not going to open themselves.

这些数据提供了本科生生活的详细描述。学生每月花费 93 小时在手机应用上，其中 12 小时在游戏上。但这些平均值掩盖了巨大的差异。三分之一的学生每月至少使用手机 210 小时（相当于每天 7 小时），三分之一的学生每月花 30 小时玩游戏。根据手机数据显示，原神到来后，学生平均晚18分钟到达自习室，提前25分钟回到宿舍。那些宝箱不会自己打开。

Gaming can be a way to retreat from the people around you. Yet the scholars show that app use is social. Extroverted students use games more than their less outgoing peers. Students who report more game-time also report better relationships with roommates. Phone habits spread. A student’s use of apps is correlated with their roommates’ use, and this correlation seems to reflect causation. How else to explain why a student’s use of apps in college correlates with even their roommates’ pre-college use?

游戏可以成为远离周围人的一种方式。然而学者们表明，应用程序的使用是社交性的。外向的学生比外向的同龄人更多地使用游戏。游戏时间较多的学生也表示与室友的关系更好。打电话的习惯蔓延开来。学生对应用程序的使用与室友的使用相关，这种相关性似乎反映了因果关系。否则如何解释为什么学生在大学中对应用程序的使用与他们的室友在大学前的使用情况相关？

One difficulty in capturing the effects of phone habits is reverse causality: students doing badly at school may seek escapist comfort. In addition, an independent source of stress, such as homesickness or loneliness, might simultaneously hurt a student’s grades and glue them to their phone, without the phone itself harming their grades. The researchers therefore exploit two factors that affected phone use but not grades. One was the appearance of Genshin Impact. The other was the government’s curbs on gaming. These limits affected only a few of the students directly: 92% of them were already 18 when the rules began. But the regulation did affect their underage friends. And since gaming is contagious, a reduction in their friends’ usage curtailed their own.

捕捉手机习惯影响的一个困难是反向因果关系：在学校表现不佳的学生可能会寻求逃避现实的安慰。此外，独立的压力来源，例如想家或孤独，可能会同时损害学生的成绩并将他们粘在手机上，而手机本身不会损害他们的成绩。因此，研究人员利用了两个影响手机使用但不影响成绩的因素。其中之一就是《原神》的出现。另一个是政府对博彩的限制。这些限制只直接影响到少数学生：规则开始时，其中 92% 的学生已经年满 18 岁。但这项规定确实影响了他们的未成年朋友。由于游戏具有传染性，朋友玩游戏的减少也影响了他们自己的玩游戏时间。

Sacrifice to the digital gods
向数字诸神献祭

The findings are best conveyed by imagining two nearly identical students, one of whom spends twice as much time gaming as the other. The gamer’s grades, on a scale from 0 to 100, would be 0.8 points lower. Because averages are clustered in Chinese universities, that would reduce their class ranking by 10 percentile points. Now imagine two identical students with contrasting roommates: one set spend twice as much time on gaming apps as the other set. That would lower a student’s grade average by 0.4 points, partly because it would encourage the student to spend a bit more time gaming as well, reducing their rank by 5 percentile points.

通过想象两个几乎相同的学生，其中一个花在游戏上的时间是另一个的两倍，可以最好地传达这一发现。玩家的等级（从 0 到 100）会降低 0.8 分。由于平均分集中在中国大学，这将使他们的班级排名降低 10 个百分点。现在想象一下两个相同的学生和截然不同的室友：一组在游戏应用上花费的时间是另一组的两倍。这将使学生的平均成绩降低 0.4 分，部分原因是它会鼓励学生花更多时间玩游戏，从而使他们的排名降低 5 个百分点。

What if gaming limits were extended to undergraduates? The authors estimate it would cut a student’s monthly game time from 12 hours to under eight, partly because friends and roommates would also play less. The restraint would raise their grades and lift their wages after graduation by 0.9% or 48 yuan ($6.80) a month. Games like Genshin Impact, which are free to play, exact a real cost. For some spiritual opium-eaters, intent on discovering other kinds of treasure, even lost wages may seem a small sacrifice. ■

如果将游戏限制扩大到本科生会怎样？作者估计，这会将学生每月的游戏时间从 12 小时减少到 8 小时以下，部分原因是朋友和室友的游戏时间也会减少。这种限制将提高他们的成绩，并将毕业后的工资提高 0.9%，即每月 48 元（6.80 美元）。像《原神》这样的免费游戏需要实际付费。对于一些精神上的鸦片吸食者来说，一心想要发现其他种类的宝藏，即使是损失的工资也似乎是一个小小的牺牲。■