考研英語時文賞讀：社交媒體或不利于兒童成長

考研英語來源：同源外刊 2019-09-03　

Social media use may harm teens’ mental health by disrupting positive activities, study says

研究表明，社交媒體的使用可能會妨礙積極的活動，從而不利于青少年的心理健康

Social media use has been linked to depression, especially in teenage girls. But a new study argues that the issue may be more complex than experts think.

社交媒體的使用與抑郁癥的患病相關，尤其對少女而言。但一項新的研究表明，問題可能比專家們想象的還要復雜。

The research, published Tuesday in the journal The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, involved interviews with almost 10,000 children between the ages of 13 and 16 in England.

這項研究于本周二發表在《柳葉刀——兒童與青少年健康》雜志上。研究人員對英國近1萬名年齡在13歲至16歲之間的兒童進行了調查。

The researchers found that social media may harm girls’ mental health by increasing their exposure to bullying and reducing their sleep and physical exercise.

研究人員發現，社交媒體可能會增加女孩受欺凌的概率、減少她們的睡眠和體育鍛煉活動的時間，從而不利于她們的心理健康。

Our results suggest that social media itself doesn’t cause harm, but that frequent use may disrupt activities that have a positive impact on mental health such as sleeping and exercising, while increasing exposure of young people to harmful content, particularly the negative experience of cyber-bullying, study co-author Russell Viner of the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health said in a statement.

該研究的共同作者、倫敦大奧蒙德街兒童健康學院的盧瑟爾·威納在一份聲明中表示，我們的研究結果表明，社交媒體本身不會造成傷害，但頻繁使用可能會擾亂正常生活，特別是對心理健康有積極影響的睡眠和鍛煉，同時也會讓未成年人接觸到諸如網絡暴力之類的有害內容。

In other words: Social media itself might not be to blame for the mental health issues; rather, it takes away from the girls’ sleep quality and exercise while exposing users to cyberbullying, and that’s what leads to lower well-being and problems with mental health.

換言之：社交媒體本身可能不是造成心理健康問題的原因;但是，它奪走了女孩的睡眠質量和鍛煉活動，同時讓孩子們暴露在網絡欺凌之下，而這正是導致幸福感下降和心理健康問題的原因。

(全文共200個詞，時代周刊)

重難點詞匯：

disrupt vt. 破壞;使瓦解;使分裂;使中斷;使陷于混亂 adj. 分裂的，中斷的;分散的

bully n. 欺凌弱小者;土霸 vt. 欺負;威嚇 vi. 欺侮人