2019年12月六级第1套长篇阅读匹配原文翻译及答案

A) [A] Have young people never had it so good? Or do they face more challenges than any previous generation? Our current era in the West is one of high wealth. This means minors enjoy material benefits and legal protections that would have been the envy of those living in the past. But there is an increasing suspicion that all is not well for our youth. And one of the most popular explanations, among some experts and the popular media, is that excessive "screen time", is to blame. (This refers to all the attention young people devote to their phones, tablets and laptops.) However, this is a contentious theory and such claims have been treated skeptically by some scholars based on their reading of the relevant data.

[A] 年轻人从未有过如此好的境遇吗？还是他们面临着比任何前代人都更多的挑战？我们西方当前的时代是一个高财富的时代。这意味着未成年人享有过去人们会羡慕的物质利益和法律保护。但越来越多的人怀疑年轻人的状况并不乐观。在一些专家和流行媒体中，最流行的解释之一是，过度的“屏幕时间”是罪魁祸首。（这指的是年轻人投入到手机、平板电脑和笔记本电脑上的所有注意力。）然而，这是一个有争议的理论，一些学者基于他们对相关数据的阅读，对此持怀疑态度。

B) [B] Now a new study has provided another contribution to the debate, uncovering strong evidence that adolescent wellbeing in the United States really is experiencing a decline and arguing that the most likely cause is the electronic riches we have given them. The background to this is that from the 1960s into the early 2000s, measures of average wellbeing went up in the US. This was especially true for younger people. It reflected the fact that these decades saw a climb in general standards of living and avoidance of mass societal traumas like full-scale war or economic deprivation. However, the "screen time" hypothesis, advanced by researchers such as Jean Twenge, is that electronic devices and excessive time spent online may have reversed these trends in recent years, causing problems for young people's psychological health.

[B] 现在，一项新研究为这场辩论提供了另一份贡献，揭示了强有力的证据，表明美国青少年的幸福感确实在下降，并认为最可能的原因是我们给予他们的电子财富。其背景是，从20世纪60年代到21世纪初，美国的平均幸福感指标有所上升。这对年轻人尤其如此。这反映了这些年代生活水平普遍提高，并避免了像全面战争或经济匮乏这样的大规模社会创伤。然而，由研究者如琼·特温奇提出的“屏幕时间”假设认为，电子设备和过度上网时间可能在近年来逆转了这些趋势，导致年轻人的心理健康问题。

C) [C] To investigate, Twenge and her colleagues dived into the "Monitoring the Future" dataset based on annual surveys of American school students from grades 8, 10, and 12 that started in 1991. In total, 1.1 million young people answered various questions related to their wellbeing. Twenge's team's analysis of the answers confirmed the earlier, well-established wellbeing climb, with scores rising across the 1990s, and into the later 2000s. This was found across measures like self-esteem, life satisfaction, happiness and satisfaction with individual domains like job, neighborhood, or friends. But around 2012 these measures started to decline. This continued through 2016, the most recent year for which data is available.

[C] 为了进行调查，特温奇和她的同事们深入研究了基于始于1991年的美国8年级、10年级和12年级学生年度调查的“监测未来”数据集。总共有110万年轻人回答了与他们幸福感相关的各种问题。特温奇团队对答案的分析证实了早期建立的幸福感上升趋势，分数在20世纪90年代和21世纪初有所上升。这在自尊、生活满意度、幸福感以及对工作、邻居或朋友等个人领域的满意度等指标中都有发现。但大约在2012年，这些指标开始下降。这种情况一直持续到2016年，这是有数据可查的最近一年。

D) [D] Twenge and her colleagues wanted to understand why this change in average wellbeing occurred. However, it is very hard to demonstrate causes using non-experimental data such as this. In fact, when Twenge previously used this data to suggest a screen time effect, some commentators were quick to raise this problem. They argued that her causal-sounding claims rested on correlational data, and that she had not adequately accounted for other potential causal factors. This time around, Twenge and her team make a point of saying that they are not trying to establish causes as such, but that they are assessing the plausibility of potential causes.

[D] 特温奇和她的同事们想理解为什么平均幸福感发生了这种变化。然而，使用像这样的非实验数据来证明因果关系是非常困难的。事实上，当特温奇之前使用这些数据来暗示屏幕时间效应时，一些评论者很快提出了这个问题。他们认为她听起来像因果关系的陈述依赖于相关数据，而且她没有充分考虑其他潜在的因果因素。这次，特温奇和她的团队特别指出，他们不是试图建立因果关系，而是在评估潜在原因的可行性。

E) [E] First, they explain that if a given variable is playing a role in affecting wellbeing, then we should expect any change in that variable to correlate with the observed changes in wellbeing. If not, it is not plausible that the variable is a causal factor. So the researchers looked at time spent in a number of activities that could plausibly be driving the wellbeing decline. Less sport, and fewer meetings with peers correlated with lower wellbeing, as did less time reading print media(newspapers) and, surprisingly, less time doing homework .(This last finding would appear to contradict another popular hypothesis that it is our burdening of students with assignments that is causing all the problems.) In addition, more TV watching and more electronic communication both correlated with lower wellbeing. All these effects held true for measures of happiness, life satisfaction and self-esteem, with the effects stronger in the 8th and 10th-graders.

[E] 首先，他们解释说，如果某个变量在影响幸福感方面发挥作用，那么我们应该期望该变量的任何变化都与观察到的幸福感变化相关。如果不是，那么该变量是因果因素就不合理。因此，研究人员查看了在可能导致幸福感下降的一些活动上花费的时间。运动减少，与同龄人见面减少，与幸福感较低相关，阅读印刷媒体（报纸）的时间减少，以及令人惊讶的是，做作业的时间减少也是如此。（后一个发现似乎与另一个流行假设矛盾，即用作业负担学生是导致所有问题的原因。）此外，看电视更多和电子通信更多都与幸福感较低相关。所有这些影响在幸福感、生活满意度和自尊的测量中都成立，且在8年级和10年级学生中影响更强。

F) [F] Next, Twenge's team dug a little deeper into the data on screen time. They found that adolescents who spent a very small amount of time on digital devices—a couple of hours a week—had the highest wellbeing. Their wellbeing was even higher than those who never used such devices. However, higher doses of screen time were clearly associated with lower happiness. Those spending 10-19 hours per week on their devices were 41 percent more likely to be unhappy than lower-frequency users. Those who used such devices 40 hours a week or more(one in ten teenagers) were twice as likely to be unhappy. The data was slightly complicated by the fact that there was a tendency for kids who were social in the real world to also use more online communication, but by bracketing out different cases it became clear that the real-world sociality component correlated with greater wellbeing, whereas greater time on screens or online only correlated with poorer wellbeing.

[F] 接下来，特温奇的团队更深入地研究了屏幕时间数据。他们发现，在数字设备上花费很少时间（每周几小时）的青少年幸福感最高。他们的幸福感甚至高于那些从不使用这些设备的人。然而，更高的屏幕时间剂量显然与较低的幸福相关。每周在设备上花费10-19小时的人比低频使用者不快乐的可能性高41%。每周使用这些设备40小时或更多（十分之一的青少年）的人不快乐的可能性是两倍。数据有点复杂，因为事实上，在现实世界中社交的孩子也倾向于使用更多在线通信，但通过排除不同情况，很明显现实世界的社交部分与更大的幸福感相关，而在屏幕上或网上花费更多时间只与较差的幸福感相关。

G) [G] So far, so plausible. But the next question is, are the drops in average wellbeing happening at the same time as trends toward increased electronic device usage? It looks like it-after all, 2012 was the tipping point when more than half of Americans began owning smartphones. Twenge and her colleagues also found that across the key years of 2013-16, wellbeing was indeed lowest in years where adolescents spent more time online, on social media, and reading news online, and when more youth in the United States had smartphones. And in a second analysis, they found that where technology went, dips in wellbeing followed. For instance, years with a larger increase in online usage were followed by years with lower wellbeing, rather than the other way around. This does not prove causality, but is consistent with it. Meanwhile, TV use did not show this tracking. TV might make you less happy, but this is not what seems to be driving the recent declines in young people's average happiness.

[G] 到目前为止，这似乎合理。但下一个问题是，平均幸福感的下降是否与电子设备使用增加的趋势同时发生？看起来是这样——毕竟，2012年是超过一半美国人开始拥有智能手机的转折点。特温奇和她的同事还发现，在2013-16的关键年份里，幸福感确实在青少年更多时间上网、使用社交媒体和在线阅读新闻，以及更多美国青少年拥有智能手机的年份最低。在第二次分析中，他们发现技术发展到哪里，幸福感的下降就随之而来。例如，在线使用量增加较大的年份之后是幸福感较低的年份，而不是相反。这并不能证明因果关系，但与因果关系一致。同时，电视使用没有显示出这种跟踪。电视可能会让你不那么快乐，但这似乎不是导致年轻人平均幸福感最近下降的原因。

H) [H] A similar but reversed pattern was found for the activities associated with greater wellbeing. For example, years when people spent more time with friends were better years for wellbeing (and followed by better years). Sadly, the data also showed face-to-face socializing and sports activity had declined over the period covered by the survey.

[H] 对于与更大幸福感相关的活动，发现了一种相似但相反的模式。例如，当人们花更多时间与朋友相处的年份，幸福感更好（并且随后年份也更好）。遗憾的是，数据还显示，在调查涵盖的期间，面对面的社交和体育活动有所下降。

I) [I] There is another explanation that Twenge and her colleagues wanted to address: the impact of the great recession of 2007-2009, which hit a great number of American families and might be affecting adolescents. The dataset they used did not include economic data, so instead the researchers looked at whether the 2013-16 wellbeing decline was tracking economic indicators. They found some evidence that some crude measures, like income inequality, correlated with changes in wellbeing, but economic measures with a more direct impact, like family income and unemployment rates (which put families into difficulties), had no relationship with wellbeing. The researchers also note that the recession hit some years before we see the beginning of the wellbeing drop, and before the steepest wellbeing decline, which occurred in 2013.

[I] 还有另一种解释是特温和她的同事们想解决的：2007-2009年大衰退的影响，它打击了许多美国家庭，并可能影响青少年。他们使用的数据集不包括经济数据，因此研究人员转而查看2013-16年的幸福感下降是否跟踪经济指标。他们发现一些证据表明，一些粗略的衡量指标，如收入不平等，与幸福感的变化相关，但具有更直接影响的经济衡量指标，如家庭收入和失业率（这使家庭陷入困境），与幸福感没有关系。研究人员还指出，衰退发生在我们看到幸福感下降开始的几年前，并且在2013年最陡峭的幸福感下降之前。

J) [J] The researchers conclude that electronic communication was the only adolescent activity that increased at the same time psychological wellbeing declined. I suspect that some experts in the field will be keen to address alternative explanations, such as unassessed variables playing a role in the wellbeing decline. But the new work does go further than previous research and suggests that screen time should still be considered a potential barrier to young people's flourishing.

[J] 研究人员得出结论，电子通信是唯一在心理健康下降的同时增加的青少年活动。我怀疑该领域的一些专家会热衷于解决其他解释，如未评估的变量在幸福感下降中起作用。但这项新工作确实比以前的研究更进一步，并建议屏幕时间仍应被视为年轻人繁荣的潜在障碍。