被智能手机毁掉的一代，并不存在！

Before You Blame Screen Time For Teen Mental Health Issues, Read This

在你将青少年心理健康问题归咎于荧屏时代之前，请阅读以下内容

Young people today are growing up in a digital world, and the hours they spend on their smartphones every day has many parents worried. But how justified are the concerns?

如今的年轻人在数字世界里长大，他们每天花在智能手机上的时间让很多父母担心。但这些担忧有多合理?

Among the public, there's a popular narrative that smartphones are destroying the next generation, causing a surge in teen depression, anxiety, and suicide. Yet despite all the hysteria, there's hardly any solid evidence on whether digital screen time causes mental health problems in youth.

在公众中，有一种流行的说法是智能手机正在摧毁下一代，导致青少年抑郁、焦虑和自杀的激增。然而，尽管所有的歇斯底里，几乎没有任何可靠的证据表明，屏幕时间是否会导致青年人的心理健康问题。

The reality is, children and teens are not going to stop using social media anytime soon, and a new study suggests maybe they don't need to. Tracking smartphone use in American adolescents, these researchers found increased screen time is not related to worse mental health.

事实是，儿童和青少年不会很快停止使用社交媒体，一项新的研究表明，他们可能不需要停止使用社交媒体。这些研究人员跟踪美国青少年使用智能手机的情况，发现屏幕显示时间的增加与精神健康状况的恶化无关。

In fact, in some cases, the use of technology actually reduced feelings of worry and symptoms of depression among participants.

事实上，在某些情况下，技术的使用实际上减少了参与者的担忧情绪和抑郁症状。

"Contrary to the common belief that smartphones and social media are damaging adolescents' mental health, we don't see much support for the idea that time spent on phones and online is associated with increased risk for mental health problems," says psychologist Michaeline Jensen at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

“与人们普遍认为智能手机和社交媒体会损害青少年的心理健康的观点相反，我们并不认为花在手机和网络上的时间会增加心理健康问题的风险。”北卡罗来纳州格林斯博罗大学的心理学家Michaeline Jensen说。

For the research, Jensen and her colleagues surveyed more than 2,000 young people, between 9 and 15 years old, at an economically and racially diverse public school in North Carolina. These students were asked questions about their mental health symptoms three times a day and at the end of each day, they reported on their daily technology use.

为了进行这项研究，詹森和她的同事在北卡罗莱纳州一所经济和种族多元化的公立学校，对2000多名9至15岁的年轻人进行了调查。这些学生每天被问三次关于他们心理健康症状的问题，每天结束时，他们报告他们的日常技术使用情况。

A year later, a sub-sample of nearly 400 participants had their smartphone use intensively tracked by the researchers, multiple times a day for two weeks.

一年后，研究人员对近400名参与者的子样本进行了密集跟踪，一天多次，持续两周。

"In our longitudinal study of adolescents followed intensively over time on their mobile devices, we found little evidence to support a linkage, correlational or causal, between adolescents' digital technology usage and mental-health symptoms," the authors conclude.

作者总结道：“在我们对青少年的纵向研究中，随着时间的推移，我们发现很少有证据支持青少年数字技术使用与心理健康症状之间的联系、相关或因果关系。”

Remarkably, the authors even found some benefits of smartphone use. Those young people who texted more, for instance, reported lower levels of depression.

值得注意的是，作者甚至发现了使用智能手机的一些好处。例如，那些发短信越多的年轻人，抑郁程度就越低。

"Here, instead, we see that those adolescents who spend the most time on technology creating their own content may instead be enjoying better mental health," the authors suggest.

作者建议：“相反，我们看到那些花最多时间在科技上创造自己内容的青少年，可能会享受更好的心理健康。”

The findings enter a mixed bag of results with small effect sizes. While some past studies have found correlations between social media use and subjective well-being, a number of other longitudinal studies have demonstrated no connection whatsoever, or associations too small to hold any meaning.

这些研究结果混杂在一起，其影响范围很小。虽然过去的一些研究已经发现社交媒体使用与主观幸福感之间存在关联，但其他一些纵向研究却没有显示出任何联系，或者关联太小，没有任何意义。

In 2017, for instance, psychologist Jean Twenge authored a widely-read article - adapted from her book - published in The Atlantic. The viral read claimed that the effect of screen activities in her research is "unmistakable", increasing the risk of depression by nearly a third among heavy users.

例如，在2017年，心理学家让·特温格(Jean Twenge)写了一篇广为阅读的文章——改编自她的书——发表在《大西洋》(Atlantic)。病毒式阅读声称，在她的研究中，屏幕活动的影响是“显而易见的”，在重度使用者中增加了将近三分之一的抑郁风险。

Over the years, however, Twenge's conclusions have been met with skepticism. When Oxford researchers used the same data, they couldn't find such a clear connection at all. Instead, they found a teenager's need to wear glasses was more predictive of mental health issues than the time they spent using digital technology each day.

然而，多年来，特温格的结论一直受到怀疑。当牛津大学的研究人员使用相同的数据时，他们根本找不到如此清晰的联系。相反，他们发现青少年需要戴眼镜，比他们每天使用数字技术的时间更能预测心理健康问题。

At this stage, it's just too early to say how technology is impacting the newest generation and their mental health. And focusing on screen time and frequency may be a complete red herring.

在这个阶段，现在说技术如何影响新一代人及其心理健康还为时过早。而关注屏幕时间和频率可能会转移注意力。

"The existing literature highlights the importance of measuring both the quality and the quantity of the different types of activities youths engage in online," the authors of the new study argue, "rather than just relying on a gross sum of time spent on screens, which may include potentially beneficial social interactions with close friends alongside likely less beneficial passive viewing of content."

这项新研究的作者认为：“现有的文献强调了衡量年轻人在网上从事的不同类型活动的质量和数量的重要性，而不是仅仅依靠屏幕上花费的总时间，这可能包括潜在的收益。”与亲密朋友的冷冰冰的社交互动，以及可能不太有益的被动观看内容。”

In other words, the key to understanding the role of technology in mental health could lie in understanding how it is used, not how often.

换句话说，理解技术在心理健康中的作用的关键可能在于理解它是如何使用的，而不是多久使用一次。

Children these days are socialising more and more online, and keeping them offline could isolate them from their peers. On the other hand, aimless scrolling or hours of video-watching might not be a bad thing to limit, especially if there's school work that needs to be completed.

如今，孩子们越来越多地在网上社交，保持他们的离线状态可能会使他们与同龄人隔离开来。另一方面，漫无目的地滚动或观看视频的时间可能不是一件坏事，尤其是在需要完成学校作业的情况下。

The authors suggest that from now on, studies should focus less on screen time itself and more on how we can best educate and support the young people growing up in the digital age.

作者建议从现在开始，研究应该少关注屏幕时间本身，多关注我们如何最好地教育和支持数字时代成长的年轻人。

"It may be time for adults to stop arguing over whether smartphones and social media are good or bad for teens' mental health and start figuring out ways to best support them in both their offline and online lives," says psychologist Candice Odgers from the University of California, Irvine.

加州大学欧文分校的心理学家坎迪丝·奥格斯说：“成年人或许应该停止争论智能手机和社交媒体对青少年的心理健康到底是好是坏，而是应该开始想办法，在他们的线下和线上生活中为他们提供最好的支持。”