Well informed:Should schools ban smartphones?深度解析：学校应该禁止智能手机吗？
Early evidence suggests such bans may do little to benefit pupils' mental health。早期证据表明，此类禁令对学生的心理健康可能帮助不大。
France has not allowed smartphone use in primary or secondary schools since 2018, 自 2018 年以来，法国就不允许在中小学使用智能手机。
claiming that it would help children focus,reduce their social-media use and mitigate online bullying.声称此举可以帮助孩子集中注意力、减少社交媒体使用，并缓解网络欺凌。
The Netherlands initiated a similar ban in January 2024.荷兰于 2024 年 1 月实施了类似的禁令。
Hungary followed suit later that year.匈牙利在同年晚些时候也效仿了这一做法。
Legislators in Britain are considering similar measures.英国的立法者正在考虑采取类似措施。
The key question facing them is whether banning smartphones in schools offers any benefits to mental health他们面临的关键问题是，在学校禁止智能手机是否有益于心理健康。
That there is a problem seems clear.问题的存在似乎是显而易见的。
In 2021 America's surgeon general compiled a report revealing that persistent feelings of hopelessness climbed by 40% among American high-school pupils between 2009 and 2019.2021 年，美国外科医生总署整理了一份报告，揭示 2009 年至 2019 年间，美国高中生持续感到绝望的比例上升了 40%。
The number who seriously considered killing themselves went up by 36%.认真考虑自杀的人数增加了 36%。
What makes these findings all the worse is that 48% of mental-health problems (like depression and anxiety) that emerge during adolescence will plague people for the rest of their lives.这些发现更令人担忧的是，在青春期出现的心理健康问题（如抑郁和焦虑）中，有 48% 会影响人的一生。
It is tempting to connect these trends with the increased availability of smartphones,but establishing a causal connection is difficult.人们很容易将这些趋势与智能手机的普及联系起来，但要确立因果关系却很困难。
Part of the problem is that smartphones contain multitudes部分问题在于，智能手机的用途非常广泛。
Using a smartphone to solve crosswords or read the news may well have markedly different psychological effects from intensive social-media use.使用智能手机来解填字游戏或阅读新闻，可能会与沉迷社交媒体产生截然不同的心理影响。
Children are no less varied.孩子们的情况也各不相同。
The brain undergoes profound changes during puberty，大脑在青春期会经历深刻变化，
meaning that any research on the effects of smartphone use needs to consider the developmental age of the children being studied as well as their precise smartphone habits.这意味着任何关于智能手机使用影响的研究都需要考虑被研究儿童的发育阶段及其具体的使用习惯。
No studies have got this specific.目前还没有研究达到如此细致的程度。
Those that have come close,however,reveal that unfettered access to social media on smartphones during puberty,especially at critical moments when the brain is changing,may cause problems. 然而，接近这一标准的研究表明，在青春期，尤其是大脑发生关键变化的时期，毫无限制地使用智能手机访问社交媒体可能会引发问题。
One study,led by Amy Orben at the University of Cambridge,asked 17409 people between the ages of ten and 21 how satisfied they were with their lives and how much they used social media.剑桥大学的艾米·奥本（Amy Orben）领导的一项研究调查了 17,409 名 10 至 21 岁的青少年，询问他们对生活的满意度以及社交媒体的使用情况。
The findings,reported in 2022 in Nature Communications,show that girls who increased their social media use over the course of a year were significantly less satisfied with their lives if the increase took place when they were between 11 and 13. 2022 年发表在《自然通讯》（Nature Communications）上的研究结果表明，如果 11 至 13 岁的女孩在一年内增加了社交媒体的使用，她们对生活的满意度会显著下降。
Boys showed the same trend when increases took place when they were 14 or 15 years old. 男孩在 14 或 15 岁时增加社交媒体使用量时，也表现出相同的趋势。
How much of this will change by banning phones in schools is unclear. 禁止学校使用手机能在多大程度上改变这种情况，仍然不清楚。
She also monitored overall screentime. 她还监测了学生的总体屏幕使用时间。
Her results show that, though those who spent more time on a smartphone overall did have a decline in mental well-being, there was no difference between the two groups.
她的研究结果显示，尽管总体上花费更多时间使用智能手机的学生确实心理健康状况较差，但两组学生之间并无明显差异。
She and her colleagues argue that setting up policies at schools alone is simply not enough.
她和她的同事认为，仅仅在学校制定政策是不够的。
Researchers are trying to paint a complete picture with both hands tied behind their back. 研究人员正试图在极其受限的条件下勾勒出完整的情况。
According to Dr Orben, social-media companies routinely refuse to give independent researchers access to detailed data on the behaviours of their users. 据奥本博士称，社交媒体公司通常拒绝向独立研究人员提供有关用户行为的详细数据。
This forces researchers to rely on less accurate proxy measures, like overall screentime. 这迫使研究人员依赖不太准确的替代性衡量标准，比如总体屏幕时间。
It also means that children playing educational games are being put in the same analytical bin as children who are on social media. 这也意味着玩教育类游戏的儿童与使用社交媒体的儿童被归入同一分析类别。
A more nuanced picture of the effects of smartphones needs to be drawn. 需要绘制一幅更细致入微的智能手机影响图景。
