考研英语阅读理解中的文章，很多来自一些外刊杂志方面的题材。接下来，北京文都考研网为扩宽2020考研学子的知识面，整理了考研英语经济学人外刊:如果没了社交网络，供考生参考。
2020考研英语经济学人外刊:如果没了社交网络
Imagine a world without the social network
设想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.
从来没有什么能像Facebook这样把这么多人聚集在一起。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.
经济学家估计，社交网络可以给其用户带来数以万亿美元的价值。但Facebook也因导致了各种各样的社会恐怖而备受指责：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.
新的研究(以及一直以来更多的研究)表明，这种指责并非全无道理。也许是时候该考虑一下，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.
为了设想这样一个(没有Facebook的)世界，我们假设研究人员可以将一部分人踢出Facebook并观察随后的结果。事实上，一些学者团队已经做到了。
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公布了结果。
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，实验组的成员被要求停用Facebook四周。
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.
研究人员对志愿者进行监督，以确保他们确实远离了社交网络，随后便研究这些被隔离在社交网络之外的人的生活会发生些什么变化。
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小时的空闲时间。他们往往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，因此对一些新闻事件的了解程度也低于那些未曾离开过社交网络的人，但他们对新闻事件的看法不会那么两极化。
Leaving Facebook boosted self-reported happiness and reduced feelings of depression and anxiety.
远离Facebook提高了主观幸福感，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.
这也帮助一些人改掉了沉溺于Facebook的习惯。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%，甚至还有5%的人(在实验结束后)还没有重新打开他们的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.
而受试者愿意再次进行实验(即他们再次停用Facebook四周)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 misperception corrected 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所提供的服务的重要性：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全离开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.
这种不情愿似乎表明，尽管Facebook存在着种种问题，但它为用户带来了大量的价值，如果没了Facebook，这些价值很可能也会随之而去。
[重难点词汇]
agglomeration [ə,ɡlɑmə'reʃən] n. 凝聚;结块;附聚
genocide ['dʒɛnəsaɪd] n. 种族灭绝;灭绝整个种族的大屠杀
redistribute [,ridɪ'strɪbjut] vt. 重新分配;再区分
overestimate [oʊvərˈɛstəˌmeɪt] n. 估计过高;评价过高;出价过高 vt./vi. 估计过高;评价过高
misperception [,mɪspə'sepʃən] n. 误解;错误知觉;错觉
以上是北京文都考研网给出的“2020考研英语经济学人外刊:如果没了社交网络”，希望对备考2020考研英语的考生有所帮助!祝2020考研顺利!
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