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背景引见： 诸如Facebook、微博、微信之类的社交网络每天正在占用我们大量的时间，很难置信假如有一天这些社交网络忽然没了，我们的生活会有什么样的变更。纽约大学和斯坦福大学的一些学者做了一个有趣的实验，假如人们周围不用Facebook，他们的生活会变成啥样？ What would happen if Facebook were turned off? 假如没有Facebook了，我们的生活会发作什么? Imagine a world without the social network 想象一个没有社交网络的世界 There has never been such an agglomeration of humanity as Facebook. Some 2.3bn people, 30% of the world’s population, engage with the network each month. 历来没有什么能像Facebook这样把这么多人汇集在一同。全球每月约有23亿人（占全球总人口的30%）在社交网络上互动。 Economists reckon it may yield trillions of dollars’ worth of value for its users. But Facebook is also blamed for all sorts of social horrors: from addiction and bullying to the erosion of fact-based political discourse and the enabling of genocide. 经济学家估量，社交网络能够给其用户带来数以万亿美圆的价值。但Facebook也因招致了各种各样的社会恐惧而备受责备：从成瘾和霸凌，到政治话语权的剥夺，再到种族清洗。 New research—and there is more all the time—suggests such accusations are not entirely without merit. It may be time to consider what life without Facebook would be like. 新的研讨（以及不时以来更多的研讨）表明，这种责备并非全无道理。或许是时分该思索一下，没有Facebook的生活会是什么样的。 To begin to imagine such a world, suppose that researchers could kick a sample of people off Facebook and observe the results. In fact, several teams of scholars have done just that. 为了想象这样一个（没有Facebook的）世界，我们假定研讨人员能够将一部分人踢出Facebook并察看随后的结果。事实上，一些学者团队曾经做到了。 In January Hunt Allcott, of New York University, and Luca Braghieri, Sarah Eichmeyer and Matthew Gentzkow, of Stanford University, published results of the largest such experiment yet. 今年1月，纽约大学的亨特·奥尔科特、斯坦福大学的卢卡·布拉赫耶里、萨拉·艾克梅尔和马修·根茨科完成了一项迄今为止最大的这种类型的实验并发布了却果。 They recruited several thousand Facebookers and sorted them into control and treatment groups. Members of the treatment group were asked to deactivate their Facebook profiles for four weeks in late 2018. 他们招募了数千名Facebook用户，并把他们分为对照组和实验组。2018年底，实验组的成员被请求停用Facebook周围。 The researchers checked up on their volunteers to make sure they stayed off the social network, and then studied what happened to people cast into the digital wilderness. 研讨人员对意愿者中止监视，以确保他们的确远离了社交网络，随后便研讨这些被隔离在社交网络之外的人的生活会发作些什么变更。 Those booted off enjoyed an additional hour of free time on average. They tended not to redistribute their liberated minutes to other websites and social networks, but chose instead to watch more television and spend time with friends and family. 那些停用Facebook的人平均额外享有1小时的闲暇时间。他们常常不会把解放出来的时间重新用在其他网站或社交网络上，而更多的是选择看电视以及和朋友、家人们共度美好时光。 They consumed much less news, and were thus less aware of events but also less polarised in their views about them than those still on the network. 他们看的新闻会少一些，因而对一些新闻事情的了解水平也低于那些不曾分开过社交网络的人，但他们对新闻事情的见地不会那么两极化。 Leaving Facebook boosted self-reported happiness and reduced feelings of depression and anxiety. 远离Facebook进步了客观幸福感，同时降低了抑郁感和焦虑感。 It also helped some to break the Facebook habit. Several weeks after the deactivation period, those who had been off Facebook spent 23% less time on it than those who had never left, and 5% of the forced leavers had yet to turn their accounts back on. 这也辅佐一些人改掉了沉溺于Facebook的习气。在停用期的几周后，相比于未停用Facebook的人（对照组），那些停用了Facebook的人（实验组）花在Facebook上的时间少了23%，以至还有5%的人（在实验终了后）还没有重新翻开他们的Facebook。 And the amount of money subjects were willing to accept to shut their accounts for another four weeks was 13% lower after the month off than it had been before. 而受试者愿意再次中止实验（即他们再次停用Facebook周围）所能够接受的酬劳的金额降低了13％。 Users, in other words, overestimate how much they value the service: a misperceptioncorrected by a month of abstention. Even so, most are loth to call it quits entirely. 换句话说，人们高估了Facebook所提供的效劳的重要性：一个月的停用使这种误解得以纠正。即便如此，大多数人还是不愿意完整分开Facebook。 That reluctance would seem to indicate that Facebook, despite its problems, generates lots of value for consumers, which would presumably vanish were the network to disappear. 这种不甘愿似乎表明，固然Facebook存在着种种问题，但它为用户带来了大量的价值，假如没了Facebook，这些价值很可能也会随之而去。 小编说： 纽约大学和斯坦福大学学者研讨的结果表明，社交网络可能关于我们并没有那么重要，就算没了Facebook，生活还会继续，客观幸福感以至还会有所进步。假如有一天没了微博、微信，你的生活会遭到影响吗？ 本文翻译：Vinnie 校核：Vinnie 编辑：Vinnie |
