218 What would happen if Facebook were turned off?

Hi, welcome to English Journal 365.

This is Hu Yuxi.

I will read the 218th English journal for you.

It’s about social media.



What would happen if Facebook were turned off?
如果停用脸书，会发生什么？



Facebook is blamed for all sorts of social horrors: from addiction and bullying to the enabling of genocide. New research suggests such accusations are not entirely without merit. It may be time to consider what life without Facebook would be like.
从成瘾和欺凌，到使种族灭绝成为可能，脸书因为造成各种社会恐慌而受到责难。新的研究表明，这些指责并非毫无价值。也许是时候该考虑一下，没有脸书的生活会变怎样了。
Several thousand Facebookers were recruited and sorted into control and treatment groups. Members of the treatment group were asked to deactivate their Facebook profiles for four weeks in late 2018.
数千名脸书用户被招募参加实验，并被分为对照组和实验组。实验组成员被要求在 2018 年年底停用他们的脸书账号四个星期。
Those booted off enjoyed an additional hour of free time on average. 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. Leaving Facebook boosted self-reported happiness and reduced feelings of depression and anxiety. Even so, most are loth to call it quits entirely. 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.
那些被迫停用脸书的人平均额外享有一小时的空闲时间。相比那些仍在使用脸书的人，他们获取到的新闻更少，因此对新闻事件的了解程度也更低，并且对这些事件的看法也不那么的两极分化。离开脸书提高了他们自我觉察到的幸福感，也减少了抑郁和焦虑的情绪。即便如此，大多数人也不愿意完全弃用脸书。这种不情愿的态度似乎表明，尽管脸书存在问题，但它为消费者创造了许多价值。如果这个社交网络平台消失了，这种价值可能就不复存在了。
How could that be? A social network thrives thanks to increasing returns to scale. The more people on a network, the more potential connections it facilitates and the larger its value to each user. Such effects helped power Facebook’s rise. You could say Facebook is the world’s first digital megacity, thronging with people, enabling huge amounts of human contact, both good and bad.
怎么会这样呢？由于规模报酬递增，社交网络得以蓬勃发展。使用一个网络的人越多，它能促成的潜在联系就越多，对于它的每个用户而言，这个网络的价值就越高。这些效应助推了脸书的崛起。你可以说，脸书是世界上第一个数字化大都市，人们蜂拥而至，使得大量的、不论好坏的社交联系成为了可能。





Well, this is the end of my English speech today.

Do you have a Facebook account?

Thanks for your listening.

Goodbye and good luck.