要關掉討厭的WiFi嗎 A teen superhero

When I was a child, I would sometimes lie in bed imagining what superhero powers I wished to possess. A cloak of invisibility? The ability to fly? The strength to lift cars? These seemed the most attractive options for a kid in 1970s Britain who adored sci-fi, Superman and Doctor Who.

當我還是個孩子的時候，有時會躺在牀上想象自己想要擁有怎樣的超人能力。隱身斗篷？能夠飛翔？舉起汽車的力量？對上世紀70年代的兒童來說，這些似乎是最具吸引力的選項，那時的英國人酷愛科幻小說、《超人》(Superman)和《神祕博士》(Doctor Who)。

No longer. Last weekend I went out to a shopping mall in a far-flung corner of suburban New Jersey, to accompany my tween daughter and friend to a “concert” of five wildly popular female YouTube stars named MyLifeAsEva, Meredith Foster, Alisha Marie, Mia Stammer and Sierra Furtado (no, I hadn’t heard of them before either).

那些日子已成爲過去。上週末，我來到新澤西郊區偏遠角落的一家購物中心，陪着10來歲的女兒和她的朋友參加一場由5位廣受歡迎的YouTube女明星表演的“演唱會”。她們的名字分別叫MyLifeAsEva、梅雷迪斯輠斯特(Meredith Foster)、阿麗莎鬠麗(Alisha Marie)、米婭施塔默(Mia Stammer)和塞拉弗塔多(Sierra Furtado)——沒聽說過吧，我以前也從未聽說過她們。

Halfway through this event, over the cacophony of screaming tweens, one of the stars posed the question that I used to ask: “What superhero power would you like?”

演唱會進行到一半的時候，其中一位明星壓過孩子們的尖叫聲，提出了一個我小時候問過的問題：“你們喜歡怎樣的超人能力？”

Not for them anything as dull as mere invisibility. Instead, one of the YouTubers declared she wanted “WiFi pulsing everywhere!” — and the crowd cheered. The ultimate superpower dream for this generation, in other words, is unlimited, ultra-high-speed internet — presumably complemented by a smartphone battery that never runs out.

他們可不想要隱身術之類無趣的能力。取而代之的是，一名演唱者宣稱她想要“無處不在的WiFi！”——人羣隨即歡呼起來。換句話說，這一代人的終極超人夢想就是無限的、超高速的互聯網——想必最好還有永不耗盡的智能手機電池。

Welcome to 21st-century teen and tween culture — and a social challenge that confronts us all. When I was growing up, phones were something that kids occasionally used — and a “concert” was a place where an audience watched other people perform. But today’s kids are super-glued to their smartphones, whenever their parents let them (and they can access WiFi). And concerts are no longer just about watching “stars”. Far from it.

歡迎來到21世紀青少年文化——一項我們全都要面對的社會挑戰。在我成長的年代，孩子偶爾纔會用到電話，“音樂會”是觀衆欣賞別人表演的地方。但今天孩子們對自己的智能手機可謂寸步不離，只要父母允許他們攜帶手機（而且可以連上WiFi）。而音樂會不再僅限於欣賞“明星”。遠非如此。

At the “Girls’ Night In” (GNI) show that I saw last Saturday, for example, the YouTube stars certainly knew how to perform: their antics left the audience screeching with all the gusto of a Beatles concert decades earlier. But singing was only a small part of the show; what they mostly did was chat with their audience and each other.

例如，在我最近觀看的“女生之夜”(Girls’ Night In)演出中，YouTube明星的確知道如何表演：她們嬉戲的動作使觀衆尖叫，煽起幾十年前披頭士(Beatles)演唱會上的那般熱情。但唱歌只佔這場演出的一小部分；她們主要做的是跟觀衆、以及相互聊天。

However, the important element of this show — at least for the tweens — was that the event and audience were being filmed for an online video, and everyone in the hall was taking selfies to be posted online. And what made it doubly exciting for the tweens was that the show blended “cyber” and “real” space in a striking way.

然而，這場表演重要元素——至少對這些孩子們來說——是演出和觀衆都在網上直播，大廳裏每個人都正在自拍，然後發到網上。讓這些孩子更加興奮的是這場演出以令人矚目的方式融合了“網絡”與“真實”空間。

My daughter and her friends have become passionate fans of stars like Alisha Marie because they have seen their YouTube videos on the internet (apparently, the GNI crowd have some 13 million followers). But they were desperate to go to New Jersey, to see the GNI group on tour, to experience the stars “in the flesh”. “They touched my hand!” they shrieked, when the YouTubers reached into the crowd. But no sooner had the girls in that auditorium seen those stars in “real” life than they felt compelled to jump into cyber space again — by taking selfies to post online. Adults may think there is a distinction between “real life” and “cyber space”; for today’s kids, these worlds blur.

我女兒和她的朋友們已經成了阿麗莎鬠麗之類明星的鐵桿粉絲，因爲她們在網上看過這些明星的YouTube視頻（顯然，GNI組合有約1300萬粉絲）。但她們還是不顧一切地來到新澤西，觀看GNI組合的巡演，親眼見到這些明星。當幾位YouTube明星來到人羣中時，孩子們尖叫道：“她們摸到我的手啦！”但這些女孩們剛在“現實”生活中見到這些明星，就再次一頭扎進網絡空間中——自拍併發上網。成年人可能認爲“真實生活”與“網絡空間”有區分；但對於今天的孩子們來說，兩個世界間的界限是模糊的。

Is this a bad thing? Like many parents, I feel bewildered — and torn. One reason I went along to the concert last weekend was that I wanted to understand more about the stars that my kids suddenly seem to adore. And having endured two hours of high-pitched screeching (and bad pizza), I can report that the overt message from these particular YouTubers seems pretty harmless: Alisha Marie, for example, tells her girl fans to keep a sense of humour about high school, to “believe in yourself”, “love what makes you!” — and “accept the body you have!” As self-help messages go, it is probably healthier than the content I absorbed from films and books at that age.

這是件壞事嗎？同很多家長一樣，我感到困惑和糾結。我跟女兒一起去這場音樂會的原因之一是，我想更多地瞭解這些孩子們突然開始崇拜的明星。在忍受了兩小時的高聲尖叫（和糟糕的披薩）後，我可以得出結論，這幾個YouTube明星公開傳達的信息看起來相當無害：例如，阿麗莎鬠麗告訴她的女孩粉絲要對高中保持幽默感，要“相信自己”、“愛你成長的環境！”以及“接受自己的形體”。就勵志信息而言，這可能比我小時候從電影和書中吸收的內容更加健康。

But what disturbs me is the topic that Sherry Turkle, an American author, describes in an important new book, Reclaiming Conversation: a fear about what all this cyber culture is doing to kids’ minds and social skills. A world where everyone is constantly taking selfies seems, to my generation, to be one that is unpleasantly narcissistic. And an era when kids assume that they need to be permanently “online”, or in performance mode, also seems a place that breeds very shallow conversations.

但讓我感到不安的是美國作家謝里舠爾克萊爾(Sherry Turkle)在一本重要的新書《拯救對話》(Reclaiming Conversation)中所描述的話題：擔憂這種網絡文化對孩子們的思想和社交技巧的影響。對我這代人而言，一個所有人都在不斷自拍的世界看起來是一個不討人喜歡、自戀的世界。而且，一個青少年認爲他們需要永遠保持“在線”（或處於表演狀態）的時代，似乎只能產生非常膚淺的對話。

Of course, as Turkle points out, there are plenty of things we can do to control these perils. We can track what our kids do online, limit their time on screens, take away their phones — or go to a New Jersey mall to see with our own eyes what they are watching. But completely banning (and even effectively policing) the internet is tough in a world where so much of life — for adults and kids — is now happening online. So I, like many parents, am frantically trying to understand this new, unfamiliar landscape. And sometimes harbouring secret fantasies about having anti-superhero powers: namely, the ability to switch off that wretched WiFi signal.

當然，正如蒂爾克萊爾指出的，我們可以有很多事情可做來控制這些風險。我們可以追蹤孩子們在網上做什麼，限制他們的上網時間，收走他們的手機，或者去新澤西的一家商場親眼看看他們正在看什麼。但在一個成人和青少年都在網上進行很大一部分生活的世界，要完全禁止（甚至是有效監管）互聯網是不現實的。所以，同很多家長一樣，我瘋狂地嘗試去理解這種新的陌生情形，有時悄悄幻想着擁有反超人力量：關掉該死的WiFi信號的能力。