背景介绍：
随着智能手机和社交媒体的普及，全球范围内对儿童屏幕使用时间的担忧日益加剧。英国家长自发组织“无智能手机童年”群组，探讨减少孩子对手机依赖的方法，同时多国政府也考虑出台限制措施。这一现象反映了社会对儿童心理健康与屏幕时间之间潜在关联的深切忧虑。研究表明，青少年在社交媒体上花费大量时间，而与此同时，年轻一代的心理健康问题日益凸显，引发了对两者因果关系的广泛讨论与研究。
What is screen
time doing to children?Demands grow
to restrict young people’s access to phones and social mediaTwo months ago Daisy Greenwell and Clare
Fernyhough set up a WhatsApp group to discuss how to stave off their young
children’s demands for smartphones. After they posted about their plans on
Instagram, other parents wanted in. 两个月前，黛西·格林威尔和克莱尔·费尔尼霍夫建立了一个 WhatsApp 群组，讨论如何遏制孩子们对智能手机的需求。他们在 Instagram 上公布了他们的计划后，许多家长也纷纷表示想要加入。Now their group, Smartphone-Free Childhood, has more than 60,000 followers debating how to keep their children away from the demon devices—a debate they are naturally conducting on smartphones of their own.现在，他们的“无智能手机童年”群组已经有超过6万名粉丝，大家正在讨论如何让孩子远离这些如恶魔一般的设备——当然，这场讨论自然是在他们自己的智能手机上进行的。This group, based in Britain, is not the
only one worried about children’s screen time. Last month the state of Florida
passed a law banning social media for under-14s. Britain’s government is
reportedly considering a ban on mobile-phone sales to under-16s. 这个来自英国的群组并不是唯一一个担心儿童屏幕使用时间的组织。上个月，佛罗里达州通过了一项法律，禁止14岁以下儿童使用社交媒体。据报道，英国政府正在考虑禁止向16岁以下儿童销售手机。The concerns are summed up by a recent book by Jonathan Haidt, “The Anxious Generation”, which argues that smartphones, and especially the social networks accessed through them, are causing a malign “rewiring of childhood”.乔纳森·海特最近的一本书《焦虑的一代》对这些担忧进行了总结，该书认为，智能手机（尤其是通过它们访问的社交网络）正在导致童年的恶性“重塑”。In a contentious debate two things are
fairly clear. First, smartphones and social media have become a big part of
childhood. By the age of 12 nearly every child has a phone, according to
research in Britain. Once they get one, social media is how they spend most of
their screen time. 在这场有争议的辩论中，有两件事相当明确。首先，智能手机和社交媒体已经成为童年的一大部分。根据英国的研究，几乎每个孩子在12岁时都拥有一部手机。一旦他们有了手机，他们的大部分屏幕使用时间就会花在社交媒体上。American teens spend nearly five hours a day on social apps, according to polls by Gallup. YouTube, TikTok and Instagram are most popular (Facebook, the world’s largest social network, is a distant fourth).根据盖洛普的民意调查，美国青少年每天在社交应用上花费近5个小时。YouTube、TikTok 和 Instagram最受欢迎（全球最大的社交网络 Facebook 排名第四，远远落后）。Second, most agree that in much of the
rich world there has been a decline in mental health among the young. The share
of American teenagers reporting at least one “major depressive episode” in the
past year has increased by more than 150% since 2010. 其次，大多数人同意，在发达国家的很多地区，年轻人的心理健康状况有所下降。自2010年以来，报告在过去一年中至少经历过一次“重度抑郁症发作”的美国青少年的比例增加了超过150%。Perhaps such terms have simply become less taboo, sceptics suggest. But it is more than talk. Across 17 mostly rich countries, there has been a sharp rise in suicide among teenage girls and young women, though their suicide rate remains the lowest of any cohort.怀疑论者认为，也许这些术语已经变得不那么禁忌了。但这不仅仅是说说而已。在17个主要发达国家中，十几岁的女孩和年轻女性的自杀率急剧上升，尽管她们的自杀率仍然是所有群体中最低的。Are the phenomena linked? The timing is
suggestive: mental health began to slide just as smartphones and social apps
took off, in the 2010s. Some studies also suggest that children who spend more
time on social media have poorer mental health than lighter users. But such
correlations do not prove causation: it may be, for instance, that depressed,
lonely children choose to spend more time doom-scrolling than happy ones do.这些现象有关联吗？时间上的巧合暗示了这一点：在21世纪10年代，随着智能手机和社交应用的兴起，心理健康每况愈下。一些研究还表明，在社交媒体上花费更多时间的儿童比轻度用户的心理健康状况更差。但这种相关性并不能证明因果关系：例如，可能是抑郁、孤独的儿童相比快乐的儿童选择花更多的时间持续浏览负面信息。A small number of randomised experimental
studies are chipping away at the causal question. In 2017 Roberto Mosquera of
the Universidad de las Américas, and colleagues, got a group of Facebook users
in America to stay off the platform for a week. The abstainers reported being
less depressed than the control group and took part in more varied activities;
they also consumed less news.少数随机实验性研究正在逐步解决这个因果问题。2017年，美洲大学的罗伯托·莫斯克拉和他的同事让一群 Facebook 美国用户一周不使用 Facebook。据报道，受试者的抑郁程度要低于对照组，而且参加的活动也更多样化；他们关注的新闻也更少。In 2018 researchers at Stanford and New
York University did a similar experiment, again in America. After a month away
from Facebook their detoxees felt happier than the control group, spent less
time online, more time with family and friends and were less politically
polarised. (Again, they knew less about the news, and spent more time watching
television alone.) The effects on well-being in both studies were modest.2018年，斯坦福大学和纽约大学的研究人员在美国进行了一项类似的实验。在远离 Facebook 一个月后，受试者比对照组更快乐，上网时间更少，与家人和朋友在一起的时间更多，政治分歧也更少。（同样，他们对新闻的关注更少，独自看电视的时间也更多。）这两项研究都没有过多关注幸福感。“The really convincing causal evidence we
have is quite limited,” admits Matthew Gentzkow of Stanford University, one of
the authors of the 2018 study. But, he argues, most points in the same
direction as the circumstantial evidence around timing. “If you put all that
together, I think it’s enough to say there is a substantial probability that
these harms are large and real.”2018年这项研究的作者之一、斯坦福大学的马修·根茨科夫承认：“我们拥有的真正令人信服的因果证据相当有限。”
但是，他认为，大多数观点都与围绕时间的间接证据方向一致。“如果你把所有这些放在一起，我认为这足以说明这些危害很有可能是巨大且真实的。”重难点词汇：
stave off 避开；延缓
demon [ˈdiːmən] n. 魔鬼；恶魔
malign [məˈlaɪn] adj. 恶意的；有害的；邪恶的 v. 诽谤；中伤
contentious [kənˈtenʃəs] adj. 好辩的；有争议的
taboo [təˈbuː] n. 禁忌；忌讳；避讳
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苏格拉底有一句名言：我知我无知。说的是，当你认识到的东西越多就越发现自己无知。苏格拉底认为，人对于客观世界的认识是有限的，且不可能完全认识客观世界，并且不应对客观世界刨根究底。神对于世界的规划自有安排，若人一意孤行地探索世界和自然的奥秘，则最终将亵渎甚至触怒神明。正因为人对神所构建的世界不可能实现完全认知，因此那些宣称自己能够认识和改造世界的人，本身便是无知的代言。尽管苏格拉底的关于“ 我知我无知”的观念的解读，在现在看来有失客观科学。但至少苏格拉底告诫人们，人的认知是有限的，现有的知识甚至可能存在错误和疏漏。同样地，我们在求学之路上也要报以我知我不知的心态，才能走得更远。最后，祝愿莘莘学子都能终有所成！
