身处这个通讯发达的年代,青少年的生活中处处可见数码科技的影子。手机无法离弃,网络无法割舍,到底是什么让你有这样深厚的网络情结?个人隐私无故泄露,网络恶霸明目张胆,徜徉于网络海洋的你是否可以全身而退、毫发无损?当你在网上畅所欲言时,你可知道,你申请的学校和应聘的企业正关注着你在网上的所作所为,以此来判断你的人格品行?美国“皮尤互联网与美国人生活项目”对青少年的网络使用情况进行了深入调查,结果究竟是喜,还是忧?
Text, text, text, that's all they think about, but are all those hours on the phone and Facebook2) turning teenagers into screen-enslaved social inadequacies3)?
短信,短信,短信,他们满脑子尽是短信。但沉溺于手机和Facebook的青少年是否正日益沦为缺乏社交的“屏奴”呢?
"I'd rather," deadpans4) Philippa Grogan, 16, "give up, like, a kidney than my phone. How did you manage before? Carrier pigeons? Letters? Going round each others' houses on BIKES?" Cameron Kirk, 14, reckons he spends "an hour, hour-and-a-half on school days" hanging out with his 450-odd5) Facebook friends; maybe twice that at weekends. "It's actually very practical if you forget what that day's homework is. Unfortunately, one of my best friends doesn't have Facebook. But it's OK; we talk on our PlayStations6)."
“我宁愿,”16岁的菲莉帕·格罗根一本正经地说,“少要一个肾,也不能没有手机。你们以前是怎么过的?飞鸽传书?写信?骑自行车走家串户?”14岁的卡梅伦·柯克估算了一下,他“上学期间每天有一到一个半小时”都是在网上和四百五十多个Facebook好友混在一起;周末上Facebook的时间可能是平时的两倍。“要是你忘记了当天的作业是什么,Facebook很有用。遗憾的是,我的一个死党不用Facebook。不过没关系,我们能在PlayStation游戏机上聊。”
Emily Hooley, 16, recalls a Very Dark Moment: "We went to Wales for a week at half term7) to revise. There was no mobile, no TV, no broadband8). We had to drive into town just to get a signal. It was really hard, knowing people were texting you, writing on your Wall, and you couldn't respond. Loads of9) my friends said they'd just never do that."
16岁的埃米莉·胡利回想起了一段暗无天日的日子:“我们放期中假去了威尔士一周复习功课。那里用不了手机,也没有电视和宽带。我们得开车到城里才能有手机信号。日子太难熬了,你知道有人在给你发短信,在你的留言板上留言,而你却无法回复。我的很多朋友都说他们再也不想过这种日子了。”
Teenagers' Digital Life 信息时代:青少年的数码生活
Teens, eh? Not how they were when I was young. Nor the way they talk to each other. Let's frighten ourselves.
青少年,嗯?和我年轻时不大一样了。他们彼此的沟通方式也不一样了。让我们先来看看那些会令我们惊愕的事实吧。
Ready?
准备好了吗?
First, 75% of all teenagers now have a mobile phone. Almost 90% of phone-owning teens send and receive texts, most of them daily. Half send 50 or more texts a day; one in three send 100. In fact, in barely four years, texting has established itself as comfortably "the preferred channel of basic communication between teens and their friends".
首先,如今75%的青少年都拥有手机,其中近九成的青少年使用手机收发短信,大部分人每天如此。有一半的人每天的短信发送量达50条或者更多;三分之一的人每天的短信发送量高达100条。事实上,仅在四年间,短信就轻松地跃居为“青少年和朋友间基本沟通的首选渠道”。
But phones do more than simply text, of course. More than 80% of phone-owning teens also use them to take pictures (and 64% to share those pictures with others). Sixty percent listen to music on them, 46% play games, 32% swap10) videos and 23% access social networking sites. The mobile phone, in short, is now "the favored communication hub for the majority of teens".
当然,手机不只是用来收发短信的。在拥有手机的青少年中,超过80%的人还用手机拍照(64%的人与其他人分享所拍的照片),60%的人用手机听音乐,46%的人用手机玩游戏,32%的人用手机互换视频,23%的人用手机登录社交网站。总而言之,手机现在已是“备受大多数青少年青睐的通讯枢纽”。
As if texting, swapping, hanging and generally spending their waking hours welded11) to their phones wasn't enough, 73% use social networking sites, mostly Facebook—50% more than three years ago. Digital communication is not just prevalent12) in teenagers' lives. It IS teenagers' lives.
收发短信、互换视频、流连网站,基本上只要人醒着就机不离身,而似乎这些还不够,73%的青少年还使用社交网站(主要是Facebook)——这个比例比三年前增加了一半。利用数码科技进行交流沟通不仅在青少年的生活中相当普遍,这简直就是他们生活的全部!
Experts' Opinions 专家灼见:网瘾原因何在?
There's a very straightforward13) reason, says Amanda Lenhart, a Pew14) senior research specialist. "Simply, these technologies meet teens' developmental needs," she says. "Mobile phones and social networking sites make the things teens have always done—defining their own identity, establishing themselves as independent of their parents, looking cool, impressing members of the opposite sex—a whole lot easier."
皮尤高级研究专家阿曼达·伦哈特指出,这种现象背后的原因其实非常简单。“简单地说,这些技术满足了青少年的发展需求,”她说,“手机和社交网站使得青少年一直在做的事情——认识自我、摆脱父母寻求独立并被别人接受、扮酷、吸引异性——变得更加容易了。”
Flirting, boasting, gossiping, teasing, hanging out, confessing: all that classic teen stuff has always happened, Lenhart says. It's just that it used to happen behind the bike sheds, or via tightly folded notes pressed urgently into sweating hands in the corridor between lessons. Social networking sites and mobile phones have simply facilitated the whole business, a gadzillion15) times over.
打情骂俏、自吹自擂、闲聊乱侃、相互取笑、到处晃悠、表白爱恋——这些典型的少年所做的事一直都在上演,伦哈特说。只不过在过去,这些事情常常出现在停车棚后,或是课间走廊汗涔涔的手心里紧紧攥着的折起来的纸条上。社交网站和手机只不过使这一切变得异常便捷起来。
For Professor Patti Valkenburg, of the University of Amsterdam's internationally respected Centre for Research on Children, Adolescents and the Media, "contemporary communications tools" help resolve one of the fundamental conflicts that rages16) within every adolescent. Adolescence, she says, is characterized by "an enhanced17) need for self-presentation, or communicating your identity to others, and also self-disclosure18)—discussing intimate19) topics. Both are essential in developing teenagers' identities, allowing them to validate20) their opinions and determine the appropriateness of their attitudes and behaviors."
帕蒂·瓦尔肯堡是国际上备受尊崇的阿姆斯特丹大学“儿童、青少年及媒体研究中心”的一名教授。她认为“现代通讯工具”有助于解决每个青少年都面临的诸多主要困惑之一。她说,青春期的特点是“自我表现的需求增强了,或者说向他人表达‘我是谁’以及自我表露(讨论私密话题)的需求增强了。这两者在青少年的自我发展过程中发挥着重要作用,使他们能够验证自己的观点并判定自身的行为举止是否得体。
But, as we all recall, adolescence is also a period of excruciating21) shyness and aching self-consciousness—which can make all that self-presentation and self-disclosure something of a perilous22), not to say agonizing, business. So the big plus23) of texting, instant messaging and social networking is that it allows the crucial identity-establishing behavior, without the accompanying embarrassment.
但是,正如我们每个人都记得的那样,青春期也是一个为害羞而苦恼、为自我意识而痛苦不安的阶段——这使得自我表现和自我表露变得颇具危险性,更不必说由此带来的痛苦煎熬了。因此,短信、即时通讯和社交网络的一大好处就是使青少年可以建立自己的身份认同(这对他们而言是至关重要的),同时又不会有尴尬相伴。
What Are They Chatting? 窃窃私语:他们究竟在聊什么?
But what do teenagers make of this newfound freedom to communicate? Philippa reckons she sends "probably about 30" text messages every day, and receives as many. "They're about meeting up—where are you, see you in 10, that kind of thing," she says. "There's an awful lot of flirting goes on, of course. Or it's, 'OMG, what's biology homework?' And, 'I'm babysitting and I'm SOOOO bored.'" (Boredom appears to be the key factor in the initiation of many teen communications.)
但是,青少年都在用这种新的通讯自由交流些什么呢?菲莉帕估计她每天要发“大约三十条”短信,也能收到同样多的短信。“都是关于见面碰头一类的事——你在哪儿,十分钟后见云云,”她说,“当然,也有很多是无聊的调侃。或者是,‘天啊,生物作业是什么来着?’以及‘我正在照看小孩,真是无聊死了。’”(无聊似乎是很多青少年开始交流的主要原因。)
Like most of her peers, Philippa wouldn't dream of using her phone to actually phone anyone, except perhaps her parents—to placate24) them if she's not where she should be, or ask them to come and pick her up if she is. Calls are expensive, and you can't make them in class.
和大多数同龄人一样,菲莉帕实际上并未想过用手机给谁打电话,可能父母除外——如果去了不该去的地方就打电话给他们报个平安,如果没到处乱逛就打电话让他们来接自己回家。电话费很贵,而且课堂上也不能打电话。
Philippa also has 639 Facebook friends, and claims to know "the vast majority" (though some, she admits, are "quite far down25) the food chain26)"). "I don't want to be bigheaded27) or anything, but I am quite popular," she says. When I call her, 129 of her friends are online.
菲莉帕还有639个Facebook好友,并称自己认识“绝大部分”(尽管她承认其中一些人“来自于社会底层,跟她不怎么搭边”)。“我不想让人觉得我自以为是或是什么,但我确实很有人缘。”她说。我采访她的时候,她Facebook上有129个好友在线。
Facebook rush-hour is straight after school, and around nine or 10 in the evening. "You can have about 10 chats open at a time, then it gets a bit slow and you have to start deleting people," Philippa says. The topics? "General banter28), light-hearted abuse. Lots of talk about parties and about photos of parties."
Facebook的在线高峰时间是刚一放学和晚上九、十点钟左右。“有时你可以一次打开差不多十个聊天窗口,这时电脑的运行速度就会变慢,你不得不关闭一些人的聊天窗口才行。”菲莉帕说。谈论的话题?“一般是些打趣的俏皮话和无关痛痒的谩骂。很多聊天内容都是关于聚会和聚会照片什么的。”
Tragic Tears 伤心之泪:网络泄露了你的什么秘密?
Sometimes, though, it ends in tears. Everyone has witnessed cyber-bullying29), but the worst thing that happened to Philippa was when someone posted "a really dreadful picture of me, with an awful double chin", then refused to take it down. "She kept saying, 'No way, it's upped my profile views 400%,'" says Philippa. It's quite easy, she thinks, for people to feel "belittled30), isolated31)" on Facebook.
然而,有时也会出现以泪洗面的结局。我们每个人都目睹过网络欺凌,不过菲莉帕所遭遇的最糟的事是有人在网上传了“一张恶搞我的照片,照片上我有两个恐怖的下巴”,而且拒不从网上删除。“她一再地说‘不行,这张照片让我的主页访问量增长了三倍。’”菲莉帕说。她认为人们很容易在Facebook上产生遭人轻视和孤立无援之感。
There are other downsides32). Following huge recent publicity, teens are increasingly aware of the dangers of online predators33). "Privacy's a real issue," says Emily. "I get 'friend' requests from people I don't know and have never heard of; I ignore them. I have a private profile. I'm very careful about that."
负面影响还不止这些。在最近大量的宣传之后,青少年开始对网络侵犯者的危险性有了更深的认识。“隐私很成问题,”埃米莉说,“我收到过一些我不认识也从未听说过的人发来的‘好友’请求,我并没有理会。我的主页有隐私设置,对此我很小心。”
A 2009 survey found up to 45% of US companies are now checking job applicants' activity on social networking sites, and 35% reported rejecting people because of what they found. Universities and colleges, similarly, are starting to look online. "You need to be careful," says Cameron Kirk, astute34) and aware even at 14. "Stuff can very easily get misunderstood." Emily agrees, but adds: "Personally, I love the idea that it's up there for ever. It'll be lovely to go back, later, and see all those emotions and relations."
2009年的一项调查发现,多达45%的美国企业现在开始审查求职者在社交网站上的活动,由于审查结果而谢绝了求职者的公司达35%。同样,各大院校也开始关注学生的网上活动。“你得小心点,网上的信息很容易引起误解。”卡梅伦·柯克说。尽管只有14岁,但他已颇为机敏,处处留意了。埃米莉对此表示赞同,但补充说:“就我个人来说,我希望我的主页一直保留在那里,因为以后回头再看这些心情和友谊时会感到很亲切。”
Screen-enslaved and Social Abnormal?
父母之忧:他们会成为“屏奴”或社交另类吗?
The question that concerns most parents, though, is whether such an unprecedented35), near-immeasurable surge36) in non-face-to-face communication is somehow changing our teenagers—diminishing37) their ability to conduct more traditional relationships, turning them into screen-enslaved, socially challenged adults. Yet teens, on the whole, seem pretty sensible about this. Callum O'Connor, 16, says there's a big difference between chatting online and face to face. "Face to face is so much clearer," he says. "Facebook and instant messaging are such detached38) forms of communication. It's so easy to be misinterpreted, or to misinterpret what someone says. It's terribly easy to say really horrible things. I'm permanently worrying—will this seem heartless, how many kisses should I add, can I say that?"
然而,大多数父母关心的问题是,这种前所未有的、几乎无法估量的、非面对面的交流狂潮是否正在以某种方式改变着青年一代——削弱他们建立更为传统的人际关系的能力,使他们长大后变成有社交障碍的“屏奴”。但总的看来,青少年对此的认识似乎颇为清醒。16岁的卡勒姆·奥康纳表示,网上聊天和面对面的交流有着天壤之别。“面对面的交流更简单明了,”他说,“通过Facebook和即时通讯进行的交流太过于孤立,非常容易引起双方的误解,也太容易祸从口出了。我总是提心吊胆的——这些话是否看起来没心没肺?我该在句后加多少个飞吻表情?我能这么说吗?”
He's certain that what goes on online "isn't completely real. Some people clearly think it is, but I feel the difference. It's really not the same." Emily agrees: "It's weird. If I have a massive fight on Facebook, it's always, like, the next day, did it actually matter? Was it important? I always go up to the person afterwards and talk to them face to face, to see their emotions and their expressions. Otherwise you never know. It's complicated."
他很肯定网上发生的事“并非全是真实的。有些人深信不疑,但我感觉到了差别,的确与现实不一样。”埃米莉表示赞同:“很奇怪,如果我在Facebook上和别人发生了严重冲突,我总会,比如说,在第二天问自己:这真的有关系吗?重要吗?我总会在事后找到当事人,跟他们面对面地讲清楚,去观察他们的情绪和表情。不然的话你将永远蒙在鼓里,很让人纠结。”
The expert Valkenburg says: "Our research gives no reason at present for concern about the social consequences of online communication—but it's early days. What if the constant self-confirmation teens experience online turns into excessive39) self-esteem40), or narcissism41)? We don't know yet."
专家瓦尔肯堡说:“我们当前的研究并未得出任何结论表明需要对网络通讯的社会后果表示担忧——不过这只是在初期。如果青少年在网上体验的那种源源不断的自我肯定变成了过分自负或者自恋,那该怎么办?我们还不知道。”
"We should," Lenhart suggests, "Step back. The telephone, the car, the television—they all, in their time, changed the way teens relate to each other, and to other people, quite radically42). And how did their parents respond? With the same kind of wailing43) and gnashing44) of teeth we're doing now. These technologies change lives, absolutely. But it's a generational thing."
伦哈特建议我们应“退一步思考问题。电话、汽车、电视——这些东西在当时都彻头彻尾地改变了青少年之间以及青少年与成人之间的沟通方式。而他们的父母是如何反应的呢?怨声载道,咬牙切齿,与我们现在的反应如出一辙。这些技术无疑会改变我们的生活,但这是与代俱存的事情。”
1. kidney [5kIdnI] n. 【解】肾,肾脏
2. Facebook: Facebook公司独家运行的一个社交网络站点,由哈佛学生马克·朱克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)及其室友创建,于2004年2月4日正式上线,常常位居全球最受欢迎网站中的前五名。2010年7月21日,该网站的活跃用户超过了五亿,达到了六年以来的最高峰。
3. inadequacy [In5AdIkwEsI] n. 不足之处;弱点,缺陷
4. deadpan [5ded5pAn] vi. 面无表情(或不带感情色彩)地表达(或表演)
5. odd [Cd] adj. [常用于构成复合词] ……以上的,挂零的
6. PlayStation: 由日本索尼公司旗下的索尼电脑娱乐(Sony Computer Entertainment)开发的游戏机。
7. half term: <英> 期中假
8. broadband [5brR:dbAnd] n. 【电信】宽带,宽波段
9. loads of: (= a load of) <口> 大量,许多,一大堆
10. swap [swCp] vt. 交换;以……作交换
11. weld [weld] vt. 使紧密结合,使成整体(into)
12. prevalent [5prevElEnt] adj. 流行的,盛行的;普遍的
13. straightforward [7streIt5fC:wEd] adj. 简单的,不复杂的
14. Pew [pju:] abbr.Pew Research Center,皮尤研究中心,它是美国一家独立性的民间调查机构,提供影响美国及世界的事件、态度及潮流的相关信息。
15. gadzillion: 以“-illion”结尾的假想的单词之一,表示一个不可计算的庞大数字。
16. rage [reIdV] vi. 流行,盛行
17. enhanced [In5hB:nst] adj. 提高的;增大的,增强的
18. disclosure [dIs5klEuVE(r)] n. 揭发;泄露,透露
19. intimate [5IntImEt] adj. 个人的;私下的,秘密的
20. validate [5vAlIdeIt] vt. 证实;确证
21. excruciating [Ik5skru:FIeItIN] adj. 使苦恼的;难忍受的
22. perilous [5perIlEs] adj. (充满)危险的
23. plus [plQs] n. 好处
24. placate [plE5keIt] vt.平息,安抚
25. down [daun] adv. 处于低等地位
26. food chain: (一个组织或社会的)等级
27. bigheaded [5bi^5hedId] adj.<口> 傲慢的,自负的
28. banter [5bAntE(r)] n. (善意的)取笑,戏谑,逗弄
29. cyber-bully: 网络欺凌,指利用网络、手机等在虚拟的空间里对别人进行攻击,比如公布攻击对象的个人资料,或发布让其名誉受损的内容,甚至发送威胁邮件、短信等。
30. belittle [bI5lItl] vt. 轻视,小看;贬低
31. isolated [5aIsEleItId] adj. 隔离的;孤立的
32. downside [5daunsaId] n. 负面,不好的一面
33. predator [5predEtE(r)] n. 造成破坏的人(或事物);损人利己者
34. astute [E5stju:t] adj. 敏锐的,精明的
35. unprecedented [7Qn5presIdEntId] adj. 无前例的,空前的,前所未闻的
36. surge [s\:dV] n. 波涛般的事物
37. diminish [dI5mInIF] vt. 削弱……的权势,使降级
38. detached [dI5tAtFt] adj. 独立的,分离的
39. excessive [Ik5sesIv] adj. 过多的,过分的;极度的
40. self-esteem [7selfI5sti:m] n. 自负,自大
41. narcissism [nB:5sIsIzEm] n. 【心】自恋(癖)
42. radically [5rAdIkElI] adv. 根本地;本质上;彻底地,完全地
43. wail [weIl] vi. 哀诉,悲叹,呜咽;抱怨
44. gnash [nAF] vi. (因愤怒或痛苦等)咬(牙),磨(牙)