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Thinking Is Becoming a Luxury Good 深度思考变成了一种奢侈品

The idea that technology is altering our capacity not just to concentrate but also to read and to reason is catching on.

技术不精改变我们专注的能力，还在改变我们阅读和思考的能力，这一观点正在被广泛接受

The conversation no one is ready for, though, is how this may be creating yet another form of inequality.

然而，人们没有准备好的是，这可能正在产生另一种形式的不平等

Think of this by comparison with patterns of junk food consumption : As ultraprocessed snacks have grown more available and inventively addictive, developed societies have seen a gulf emerge between those with the social and economic resources to sustain a healthy lifestyle and those more vulnerable to the obesogenic food culture.

可以把这件事情和垃圾食品消费的模式做比较，随着超加工食品变得容易获得并且更具有上瘾性，发达社会出现了一些鸿沟--一边是拥有社会和经济资源、能够维持健康生活方式的人，另一边则是更容易收到肥胖食物文化影响的脆弱群体

This bifurcation is strongly class-inflected: Across the developed West, obesity has become strongly correlated with poverty.

这种分化明显带有阶级烙印，在发达的西方国家，肥胖以及与贫困密切相关

I fear that so, too, will be the tide of post-literacy.

我担心，后读写时代的浪潮也会同样如此

Long-form literacy is not innate but learned, sometimes laboriously.

长篇的阅读能力不是天生的，而是学习来的，有时还是通过艰苦的努力获得的

As Maryanne Wolf, a literacy scholar, has illustrated, acquiring and perfecting a capacity for long-form "expert reading" is literally mind-altering.

正如读写学家 Maryanne Wolf 所阐明的，获得并完善 '专业阅读' 的能力，确实会改变思维的

It rewires our brains, increasing vocabulary, shifting brain activity toward the analytic left hemisphere and honing our capacity for concentration, linear reasoning and deep thought.

它会重塑我们的大脑，增加词汇量，使大脑活动转向分析性的左半去，磨练我们专注，线性推理和深度思考的能力

The habits of thought formed by digital reading are very different.

由数字化阅读所形成的思维习惯是非常不同的

As Cal Newport, a productivity expert, shows in his 2016 book, "Deep Work," the digital environment is optimized for distraction, as various systems compete for our attention with notifications and other demands.

正如效率专家， Cal Newport 在其 2016 年的著作 《Deep Work》中指出，数字化环境被优化成利于分心的，因为各种系统会通过通知和其他需求来争夺我们的注意力

Social media platforms are designed to be addictive, and the sheer volume of material incentivizes intense cognitive "bites" of discourse calibrated for maximum compulsiveness over nuance or thoughtful reasoning.

社交媒体平台的设计本身就具有成瘾性，而大量的内容刺激人们进行强烈的认识“快速摄入”，这种方法式追求最大程度的上瘾性，而非微妙之处或深思熟虑点推理

The resulting patterns of content consumption form us neurologically for skimming, pattern recognition and distracted hopping from text to text — if we use our phones to read at all.

由此产生的消费模式在神经层面上把我们塑造成了适合略读、模式识别以及分心地从一个文本条道另一个文本的人--当然，如果你在用手机阅读的话

Increasingly, the very act of reading scarcely seems necessary.

越来越多的时候，阅读这一行为显得不再有必要了

Platforms such as TikTok and YouTube Shorts offer a bottomless supply of enthralling, short-form videos.

像抖音和 YouTube Shorts 这样的平台，提供了无穷无尽的迷人短视频

These combine with visual memes, fake news, real news, clickbait, sometimes hostile misinformation and, increasingly, a torrent of A.I.-generated slop content.

这些内容又和视觉类的表情包、假新闻、真新闻、标题党、有时带有敌意的错误信息，以及越来越多的大量 AI 生成的垃圾内容结合在一起

The result is a media environment that / seems like the cognitive equivalent of the junk food aisle / and is every bit as difficult to resist as those colorful, unhealthy packages.

结果就是，一个媒体的环境看起来就像认知层面的垃圾食品货架，并且和那些五颜六色但不健康食品的食品包装一样难以抵制

A classical liberal might retort: Sure, but just as with junk food, it's up to the individual to make healthy choices.

一位古典自由主义者可能会反驳说：当然，但就像垃圾食品一样，是否做出健康选择取决于个人

What this fails to take into account, though, is that just like the negative health impacts of junk food overconsumption, the cognitive harms of digital media will be more pronounced at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale.

然而，这未能考虑到的是，就像垃圾食品过量摄入会带来的负面健康影响一样，数字媒体的认知危害在社会经济底层人群中会显得更加显著

We see hints of this already.

我们已经看到了这方面的迹象

As Dr. Wolf points out, literacy and poverty have long been correlated.

正如 Wolf 博士指出，读写能力和平困长期以来一直是相关联的

Now poor kids spend more time on screens each day than rich ones — in one 2019 study, about two hours more per day for U.S. tweens and teenagers whose families made less than $35,000 per year, compared with peers whose household incomes exceeded $100,000.

如今，穷孩子在屏幕上画的时候比富孩子更多，在一项2019年的研究中，美国收入低于 3.5 万美元的家庭的青少年和少年儿童每天平均比家庭年收入超过 10 万美元的同龄人多花大约 2 小时