背景介绍：
《原神》是一款由中国开发商米哈游于2020年9月推出的网络游戏，一经推出迅速在全球范围内走红，吸引了数百万忠实玩家。故事背景设定在一个名为提瓦特的大陆，玩家需探索七个各具特色的世界，与伙伴并肩作战，对抗怪物，解开谜题。然而，随着游戏的普及，游戏成瘾问题也日益受到关注，特别是在中国，政府采取了一系列限制措施以应对青少年游戏成瘾问题。在此背景下，一项新研究探讨了玩游戏对中国学生学业成绩、幸福感及就业市场成功的影响。
How bad are
video games for your grades?
玩游戏对成绩的影响有多大？
Chinese
students provide an answer
中国学生给出了答案
Arriving on the magical continent of
Teyvat, you and your twin are attacked and separated by an unwelcoming god.
When you regain consciousness, you set off in search of your lost sibling,
exploring seven beguiling worlds (one of which resembles a Chinese national
park).
到达神奇的提瓦特大陆后，你和你的孪生兄弟/姐妹被一个不受欢迎的神袭击并被迫分开。当你恢复意识后，你毅然踏上了寻找兄弟/姐妹的征途，探索七个各具魅力的世界（其中一个世界景致宛若中国的国家公园，令人心驰神往）。
Along the way you team up with other heroes, blessed with elemental powers. One can cross lakes by freezing the water beneath his feet. Another can float on air currents of his own creation. Together, your travelling party must fight monsters, solve puzzles and plunder treasure chests.
在这漫长的旅途中，你有幸与其他几位拥有元素力量的英雄结伴而行。他们之中，有人能将脚下的水面凝结成冰，轻松跨越湖泊；有人则能在自创的气流中悠然漂浮，如同御风而行。你们一行人并肩作战，既要对抗凶猛的怪物，又要解开复杂的谜题，还不忘探寻那些藏匿于各地的宝箱。
Released in September 2020 by a Chinese
developer, the online game “Genshin Impact” became a big hit. A year after its
release, it was attracting more than 13m monthly users in China and more than
50m worldwide. The success of this home-grown creation and others like it was
not, however, a source of great pride for China’s government.
2020年9月，一款由中国开发商推出的网络游戏《原神》迅速走红。发布仅一年后，该游戏便在中国吸引了超过1300万的月活跃用户，全球范围内更是拥有超过5000万的忠实玩家。然而，这款国产游戏及其他同类作品的成功，并未让人感到特别自豪。
It worries that gaming addiction poses a threat to teenagers. In 2021 a state-run newspaper complained that online games were contributing to myopia, bad grades and
alienation
. They are often described as “spiritual opium”, it said.
相反，人们对于游戏成瘾可能给青少年带来的威胁深感忧虑。2021年，一家官媒更是直言不讳地指出，网络游戏会导致近视、学习成绩下滑以及社交疏离，甚至将其比作“精神鸦片”。
In 2019 China’s government limited
children under 18 to an hour and a half of online game-time a day during the
school week. In 2021 it went further, permitting only three hours a week. The
limits were part of a crackdown on consumer-tech firms that horrified
entrepreneurs and investors. Still, parents around the world will be keen to
know whether they did any good.
为了应对这一问题，中国早在2019年便对18岁以下儿童在上学期间每天玩网络游戏的时间做出了限制，规定不得超过一个半小时。而到了2021年，这一限制进一步收紧，每周仅允许三小时的游戏时间。这些举措作为打击消费科技公司的一部分，让不少企业家和投资者感到震惊。尽管如此，世界各地的家长们仍迫切想知道这些措施是否真的有利于孩子的成长。
Those curious will find some clues in a
remarkable new study by Panle Jia Barwick and Chao Fu of the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, as well as Siyu Chen of Jinan University and Teng Li of Sun
Yat-Sen University. It sheds light on the impact of gaming (and other
mobile-phone habits) on the grades, well-being and job-market success of
Chinese students.
对于那些充满好奇的人来说，一项引人注目的新研究或许能提供一些有价值的线索。这项研究由威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校的潘乐·贾·巴维克和付超，以及暨南大学的陈思宇和中山大学的李腾共同合作完成。它深入探讨了玩游戏（以及其他手机使用习惯）对中国学生的学业成绩、幸福感以及就业市场成功的影响。
To tease out such effects, the researchers make use of the government’s imposition of time limits and the arrival of Genshin Impact. They show that mobile-phone apps are
contagious
: students will use their phone more if roommates do. The study also demonstrates some digital harm: grades suffer along with a graduate’s initial job offers.
为了准确梳理出这些影响，研究人员巧妙地利用了政府强加的时间限制以及《原神》的兴起作为研究背景。研究表明，手机应用程序具有极强的传染性：如果室友频繁使用手机，其他学生也会不自觉地增加手机使用时间。此外，这项研究还揭示了一些数字危害，即毕业生的学习成绩会随着他们最初工作机会的减少而下降。
What sets the study apart is the data. The
authors have access to the university records of thousands of undergraduates
who enrolled at a mid-tier university in an unnamed southern province from 2018
to 2020.
让这项研究脱颖而出的关键在于其数据的丰富性和准确性。作者们查阅了2018年至2020年间，在中国南方某省一所中等规模大学就读的数千名本科生的大学记录。
More remarkable, they also have access to mobile-phone records—calls made, apps used, locations visited—for millions of subscribers. Because customers provide their national-identity number when they register for a phone, the researchers can match the university records of 6,430 students to their phone data.
更为引人注目的是，他们还有幸获得了数百万用户的手机通话记录、应用程序使用记录以及访问位置信息。由于用户在开通办理手机号时提供了身份证号码，研究人员得以将6430名学生的大学记录与他们的手机数据进行精准匹配。
By looking at their calls, they can map out their friendship networks, even before they arrived at university. And by consulting course schedules and class locations, they are also able to chart where students were meant to be each hour of the week.
通过深入分析这些学生的通话记录，研究人员甚至能够绘制出他们上大学之前的友谊网络。同时，结合课程安排和上课地点，他们还能绘制出学生一周之中每个小时预期所处位置的图表。
The data provide a detailed portrait of
undergraduate life. Students spend 93 hours a month on mobile-phone apps,
including 12 hours on games. But these averages mask wide variation. A third of
the students use their phones at least 210 hours a month—equivalent to 7 hours
a day—and a third spend 30 hours a month on games.
这些数据为我们提供了大学生生活的详尽写照：学生们每月平均花费93个小时在手机应用上，其中12个小时用于玩游戏。然而，这些平均值背后隐藏着巨大的差异。三分之一的学生每月至少使用手机210个小时，相当于每天7个小时；而同样比例的学生则每月花费30小时沉浸在游戏世界中。
After the arrival of Genshin Impact, the average student arrived at their study hall 18 minutes later and returned to the dorm 25 minutes earlier, according to the data from their phones. Those treasure chests were not going to open themselves.
根据他们手机上的数据，《原神》的兴起使得学生们平均晚到自习室18分钟，并提前25分钟回到宿舍。毕竟，那些宝箱可不会自己打开。
Gaming can be a way to retreat from the
people around you. Yet the scholars show that app use is social. Extroverted
students use games more than their less outgoing peers. Students who report
more game-time also report better relationships with roommates.
玩游戏常被视为一种远离人群的方式。然而，学者们的研究表明，应用程序的使用实际上具有很强的社交性。外向的学生比内向的同龄人玩游戏更多，而且报告游戏时间更多的学生与室友的关系也更为融洽。
Phone habits
spread. A student’s use of apps is correlated with their roommates’ use, and
this correlation seems to reflect causation. How else to explain why a
student’s use of apps in college correlates with even their roommates’
pre-college use?
使用手机的习惯会在学生群体中蔓延开来，学生对应用的使用情况与其室友的使用情况高度相关，这种相关性似乎在一定程度上反映了因果关系。否则，我们如何解释学生在大学期间使用的应用程序甚至与室友在大学前使用的应用程序存在关联呢？
One difficulty in capturing the effects of
phone habits is reverse causality: students doing badly at school may seek
escapist comfort. In addition, an independent source of stress, such as
homesickness or loneliness, might simultaneously hurt a student’s grades and
glue them to their phone, without the phone itself harming their grades.
在捕捉手机习惯影响的过程中，一个难以克服的困难是反向因果关系：在学校表现不佳的学生可能会寻求通过手机来逃避现实。此外，乡愁、孤独等独立的压力来源也可能同时影响学生的学业成绩，并使他们更加依赖手机，而手机本身或许并未直接影响他们的学业。
The researchers therefore exploit two factors that affected phone use but not grades. One was the appearance of Genshin Impact. The other was the government’s curbs on gaming. These limits affected only a few of the students directly: 92% of them were already 18 when the rules began. But the regulation did affect their underage friends. And since gaming is contagious, a reduction in their friends’ usage curtailed their own.
因此，研究人员精心找出了两个既影响手机使用又不影响学业成绩的因素：一是《原神》的出现；二是政府对游戏时间的限制。这两个因素仅对一小部分学生造成了直接影响——当限制游戏时间的规定开始实施时，92%的学生已经年满18岁。然而，这项规定确实对他们的未成年朋友产生了影响。由于游戏具有传染性，这些未成年朋友游戏时间的减少也间接影响了那些已成年学生的游戏习惯。
The findings are best conveyed by
imagining two nearly identical students, one of whom spends twice as much time
gaming as the other. The gamer’s grades, on a scale from 0 to 100, would be 0.8
points lower. Because averages are clustered in Chinese universities, that
would reduce their class ranking by 10 percentile points.
通过构想两个几乎如出一辙的学生，其中一个在游戏上投入的时间是另一个的两倍，我们能够最直观地理解这一发现。在0至100的评分体系中，那位热衷于游戏的学生的分数会低0.8分。鉴于中国大学中成绩普遍集中于某一区间，这样的分数差距将导致其班级排名下滑10个百分点。
Now imagine two identical students with contrasting roommates: one set spend twice as much time on gaming apps as the other set. That would lower a student’s grade average by 0.4 points, partly because it would encourage the student to spend a bit more time gaming as well, reducing their rank by 5 percentile points.
现在，让我们进一步设想，有两位完全相同的学生，但他们所接触的室友截然不同：一组室友在游戏应用上花费的时间是另一组的两倍。这种差异将使得学生的平均成绩降低0.4分，部分原因在于室友的行为会鼓励该学生也多花些时间在游戏上，进而使其排名再降5个百分点。
What if gaming limits were extended to
undergraduates? The authors estimate it would cut a student’s monthly game time
from 12 hours to under eight, partly because friends and roommates would also
play less. The restraint would raise their grades and lift their wages after
graduation by 0.9% or 48 yuan ($6.80) a month.
倘若游戏限制政策扩大至大学生群体，又将如何呢？作者预测，这将促使学生每月的游戏时间从12小时缩减至不足8小时，部分原因在于朋友和室友也会相应减少游戏时间。此限制不仅能够提升学生的学业成绩，还能使他们在毕业后每月的工资增长0.9%，即48元人民币（约合6.80美元）。
