文章來源：《經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)人》May 6th 2023 期 Graphic detail 欄目 Mental?health

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IN 2017 JEAN TWENGE, a professor at San Diego State, wrote an essay entitled “Have smartphones destroyed a generation?” Her answer, “yes”, was?provocative?at the time. Now, it is a common?refrain.

2017年，圣地亞哥州立大學(xué)教授珍·特文格寫了一篇文章，題為 "智能手機(jī)是否摧毀了一代人？" 她的答案是 "是"，可謂轟動(dòng)一時(shí)?，F(xiàn)在，這說法已司空見慣。

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Spurred?by recent data showing a rise in depression among American teenagers, both the British and American press have?barraged?readers with stories about social media?ravaging?young people’s mental health.?Jonathan Haidt of New York University has compared social media to?waterboarding.?The public has noticed: in a recent survey, 53% of Americans said that social media were mostly or fully responsible for increasing teenagers’ depression.

受近期數(shù)據(jù)表明美國(guó)青少年抑郁癥增多的影響，英國(guó)和美國(guó)媒體向讀者紛紛報(bào)道社交媒體破壞年輕人心理健康的故事。紐約大學(xué)的喬納森.海特將社交媒體比作水刑。公眾已經(jīng)注意到：在最近的一項(xiàng)調(diào)查中，53%的美國(guó)人認(rèn)為社交媒體對(duì)青少年的抑郁癥增加負(fù)有主要或全部責(zé)任。

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Smartphones went global long ago. If they are causing an epidemic of sadness, evidence should appear around the world.?Data support the claim that young people, particularly girls, have?deteriorating?mental health. But they leave room for doubt that mobiles are the main?culprit.

智能手機(jī)很早就走向了全球。如果他們?cè)斐闪艘钟舭Y的流行，那么世界各地應(yīng)該會(huì)出現(xiàn)證據(jù)。數(shù)據(jù)證實(shí)了“年輕人（特別是女孩子）心理健康狀況惡化”的說法。但對(duì)“手機(jī)是罪魁禍?zhǔn)住钡恼f法表示懷疑。

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Mental health is hard to measure. Questionnaires are affected by survey design and psychological diagnoses vary between countries and over time.?Instead, we focused on suicides and hospitalisations for self-harm among 17 countries.

心理健康很難衡量。問卷調(diào)查受到問題設(shè)計(jì)的影響，而且心理診斷因國(guó)家和時(shí)間而異。相反，我們專注于研究17個(gè)國(guó)家的自殺率和自殘住院率情況。

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Both indicators look worrying for girls. Suicide rates have been falling overall, but girls—who kill themselves less often than other groups—are an exception.?Among girls aged 10-19, suicide rates rose from an average of 3.0 per 100,000 people in 2003 to 3.5 per 100,000 in 2020.?The rate among boys, although higher at 6.1 per 100,000 population, has barely changed.

這兩項(xiàng)針對(duì)女孩的數(shù)據(jù)令人擔(dān)憂。自殺率總體上一直在下降，但自殺率低于其他群體的女孩數(shù)據(jù)是個(gè)例外。在10-19歲的女孩中，自殺率從2003年的平均每10萬人3.0人上升到2020年的每10萬人3.5人。男孩的自殺比率雖然較高，為每10萬人6.1人，但幾乎沒有變化。

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Girls engage in more non-fatal self-harm, like cutting, than boys do. This measure shows even steeper increases.?For teenage girls, rates of hospitalisation for self-harm have climbed since 2010 in all 11 countries with available data, by an average of 143%. Boys’ average rise was 49%.

女孩比男孩更多地進(jìn)行非致命性自殘，如割傷。這項(xiàng)數(shù)據(jù)顯示出更陡峭的增長(zhǎng)。自2010年以來，在所有11個(gè)有數(shù)據(jù)的國(guó)家中，少女因自殘而住院的比率都在攀升，平均上升了143%。男孩的平均增幅為49%。

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Are smartphones to blame? In America and Britain, rates of suicide and self-reported sadness were steady until roughly 2010, when Instagram launched, and then took off.?Although these?simultaneous?increases do not prove that one trend caused the other, such a correlation would probably arise if phones really were at fault.

智能手機(jī)是罪魁禍?zhǔn)讍幔吭诿绹?guó)和英國(guó)，自殺率和自報(bào)的憂郁率一直很穩(wěn)定，直到2010年前后Instagram推出，之后這些數(shù)據(jù)就飆升了。盡管這些數(shù)據(jù)同時(shí)增加并不能證明一種趨勢(shì)導(dǎo)致了另一種趨勢(shì)，但如果真是手機(jī)的原因，這種相關(guān)性可能就出現(xiàn)了。

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Elsewhere, however, the evidence is mixed. Some countries, like Sweden, saw sharp rises in hospitalisations for self-harm in 2006, with a plateau in 2010-18.?In others, such as Italy, this rate was flat until covid-19 arrived. A few countries had no rises at all. Suicides varied similarly.

然而，其他地方的證據(jù)不一。在一些國(guó)家，如瑞典2006年因自殘而住院的人數(shù)急劇上升，在2010-2018年趨于平穩(wěn)。在其他國(guó)家，如意大利的這一數(shù)據(jù)比率在疫情之前一直持平。有幾個(gè)國(guó)家根本就沒有上升。自殺率也有類似的變化。

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Because smartphones were adopted at different rates in different countries, the timing of any increases they caused in suicides or self-harm should vary on this basis.?Mr Haidt says that smartphones are especially risky for girls, because boys spend more time on video games and less on depression-inducing social media.?However, we could not find any statistical link between changes over time in the?prevalence?of either mobile-internet subscriptions or self-reported social-media use in a country, and changes over time in that country’s suicide or self-harm-hospitalisation rates, for either boys or girls.?After adjusting for the impact of covid, which raised these rates globally, this was true for all age groups, and for a range of time lags.

由于智能手機(jī)在不同國(guó)家的普及率不同，因此它們導(dǎo)致自殺或自殘?jiān)黾拥臅r(shí)間應(yīng)在此基礎(chǔ)上有所不同。海特說，智能手機(jī)對(duì)女孩來說特別危險(xiǎn)，因?yàn)槟泻⒒ㄔ谝曨l游戲上的時(shí)間更多，而花在導(dǎo)致抑郁癥的社交媒體上的時(shí)間更少。然而，我們無法找到任何統(tǒng)計(jì)上的聯(lián)系，表明在一個(gè)國(guó)家中，移動(dòng)互聯(lián)網(wǎng)訂閱率或自報(bào)使用社交媒體的普及率隨時(shí)間的變化，與該國(guó)男孩或女孩的自殺或自殘住院率隨時(shí)間的變化有關(guān)聯(lián)。在調(diào)整了疫情的影響后（因?yàn)橐咔樵谌蚍秶鷥?nèi)提高了這些比率），所有年齡組和一系列時(shí)間滯后的情況都是如此。

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Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.?Numerous studies using randomised or natural experiments have implied that social media can cause sadness or anxiety in teenagers.?And smartphones could still inflict grave damage without driving people to hurt or kill themselves.?But if social media were the?sole?or main cause of rising levels of suicide or self-harm—rather than just one part of a complex problem—country-level data would probably show signs of their effect.

沒找到證據(jù)并不代表沒有證據(jù)。許多使用隨機(jī)或自然實(shí)驗(yàn)的研究都表明，社交媒體會(huì)導(dǎo)致青少年的憂郁或焦慮。智能手機(jī)仍然可以造成嚴(yán)重的傷害，但不會(huì)導(dǎo)致人們自殘或自殺。但是，如果社交媒體是自殺或自殘率上升的唯一或主要原因——而不僅僅是復(fù)雜問題的一部分——那么國(guó)家層面的數(shù)據(jù)就會(huì)顯示出其影響的跡象。