【英语外刊每日一读】如何让你的社交媒体成为积极乐观

发布时间：2025-09-04 18:32

如何在社交媒体上关注有趣且积极的账号，获取灵感。 #生活乐趣# #休闲#

How to make your social media happier

如何让你的社交媒体变得积极乐观

Picture this: you're between Zoom meetings, and scrolling through your social media newsfeed. Headlines like "Death toll continues to rise", "COVID-19 may cause long-term health implications" and "Health-care systems overwhelmed" flash across your screen. Your mood takes a dive, but you can't stop scrolling.

想象这样一个画面，你刚刚开完视频会议，随手看了看来自社交媒体的新闻推送。你的屏幕上闪过了诸如“死亡人数继续上升”、“新冠病毒可能会对健康产生长期危害”、“医疗系统不堪重负”等标题。你的情绪会一落千丈，但你仍然会继续向下滑动手机。

If this scenario rings true for you, you're not alone. Research shows people have a tendency to seek out information during uncertain times – it's a natural coping mechanism. But is persistent information-seeking on social media, sometimes called doomscrolling, helpful during a pandemic, or any time?

如果你真的存在这种情况，那么你不是一个人。研究表明，在充满不确定性的时期，人们会有寻找信息的倾向——这是一种本能的应对机制。但在社交媒体上持续搜索信息（也被称为绝望刷屏）是否会在疫情期间或其他时候给你提供帮助？

Research on the effects of bad news on mood suggest exposure to negative COVID news is likely to be detrimental to our emotional wellbeing. For instance, one study conducted in March 2020 involving more than 6,000 Americans found that the more time participants spent consuming COVID news in a day, the unhappier they felt.

有关负面新闻对情绪影响的研究表明，接收负面的疫情消息可能不利于我们的精神健康。比如说，2020年3月进行的一项涉及6000多名美国人的研究发现，参与者每天浏览关于疫情新闻的时间越久，他们的情绪就越低落。

These findings are striking but leave a few key questions unanswered. Does doomscrolling make people unhappy, or are unhappy people just more likely to doomscroll? How much time spent doomscrolling is a problem? And what would happen if, instead of doomscrolling, we were "kindness scrolling" – reading about humanity's positive responses to a global crisis?

这些发现令人惊讶，但仍然留下了几个关键问题没有解决。究竟是绝望刷屏让人不快乐，还是不快乐的人更爱绝望刷屏？花多长时间刷手机会导致负面情绪？如果我们不看负面新闻，而是看正面新闻（比如人们对全球危机的积极回应），情况又如何？

To find out, researchers conducted a study where they showed hundreds of people real-world content on either Twitter or YouTube for two to four minutes. The Twitter feeds and YouTube videos featured either general news about COVID, or news about kindness during COVID. Researchers then measured these participants' moods using a questionnaire, and compared their moods with participants who did not engage with any content at all.

为了找到答案，研究人员进行了一项研究，他们让几百人观看推特或油管上的一些真实新闻（不是有关新冠病毒的常规新闻就是疫情期间人们的善举）。然后，研究人员通过问卷调查评价这些参与者的情绪状况，并将他们的情绪与那些完全没有观看任何内容的参与者进行比较。

People who were shown general COVID-related news experienced lower moods than people who were shown nothing at all. Meanwhile, people who were shown COVID news stories involving acts of kindness didn't experience the same decline in mood, but also didn't gain the boost in mood they'd predicted.

结果发现，相比什么都没看的人，那些观看了新冠病毒相关新闻的人情绪更低落一些。与此同时，那些观看疫情期间善举的参与者情绪并没有变得低落，但也没有如预期那样有所提升。

These findings suggest that spending as little as two to four minutes consuming negative news about COVID-19 can have a detrimental impact on our mood.

这些发现表明，仅仅花2-4分钟观看有关疫情的负面新闻就会对我们的情绪产生负面影响。

Although researchers didn't see an improvement in mood among participants who were shown positive news stories involving acts of kindness, this may be because the stories were still related to COVID. In other research, positive news stories have been associated with improvements in mood.

尽管研究人员没有看到参与者的情绪有所改善，但这可能是因为这些内容仍然与新冠疫情有关。不过另有研究发现，正面的新闻报道能够改善人们的情绪。

So what can we do to look after ourselves, and make our time on social media more pleasurable? One option is to delete our social media accounts altogether. Figures show almost half of Facebook users in the UK and the US considered leaving the platform in 2020.

那么，我们能做些什么来提升自己的情绪，并让我们在刷社交媒体时更愉快呢？一种方式是完全删除我们的社交媒体账号。数据显示，2002年，英国和美国近一半的脸书用户曾考虑注销账号。

But how realistic is it to distance ourselves from platforms that connect nearly half of the world's population, particularly when these platforms offer social interactions at a time when face-to-face interactions can be risky, or impossible?

但是，想要远离将全球近一半人口连接起来的社交媒体平台是否现实，尤其是在如今这个特殊的时期，面对面互动仍具危险，而这些平台却可以提供社交功能？

Given that avoidance might not be practical, here are some other ways to make your experience on social media more positive. Be mindful of what you consume on social media. Focus on the personal news and photos shared instead of the latest headlines.

考虑到远离社交媒体并不现实，这里有一些其他方法可以让你在社交媒体上的经历更加积极向上。首先，留意你在社交媒体上观看的内容。多看看朋友发的消息和照片，少看一些新闻资讯。

Seek out content that makes you happy to balance out your newsfeed. This may be images of cute kittens, beautiful landscapes, drool-worthy food videos or something else. You could even follow a social media account dedicated to sharing only happy and positive news.

其次，多看一些能让你心情愉悦的内容，比如可爱的小猫、美丽的风景、让人看了直流口水的美食视频等，你甚至困关注一个只分享趣事和正面新闻的社交媒体账号。

Use social media to promote positivity and kindness. Sharing good things that are happening in your life can improve your mood, and your positive mood can spread to others. You may also like to compliment others on social media. While this might sound awkward, people will appreciate it more than you think.

最后，利用社交媒体分享一些乐观向上的内容。分享生活中发生的趣事可以改善你的情绪，而你的积极情绪可以影响给其他人。你也可以在社交媒体上夸赞别人。虽然这听起来可能有点尴尬，但人们会比你想象的更希望得到他人的赞美。

As the pandemic continues to alter our lives and newsfeeds, the study highlight the importance of being aware of the emotional toll negative news takes on us. But there are steps we can take to mitigate this toll and make our social media a happier place.

随着疫情继续改变我们的生活和新闻推送，这项研究强调了负面新闻会让我们的情绪变得低落。但我们可以采取一些措施来缓解这种情况，让我们的社交媒体成为一个带给我们欢笑的地方。

(全文共657个词，标红单词为考研重难点词汇)

重难点词汇：

overwhelm [ˌoʊvərˈwelm] vt. 淹没；压倒；受打击
detrimental [ˌdetrɪˈmentl] adj. 有害的，不利的

engage with 交战；与……接洽

考研英语：这才是必考词汇（何凯文）￥45.60