Instagram makes you worry: everyone is perfect ——except you
Instagram让人焦虑：每个人都是完美的——除了你
When 24-year-old fashion blogger Scarlett Dixon posted a picture of herself having breakfast, the internet turned nasty. “The best of days start with a smile and positive thoughts. And pancakes. And strawberries.”.
"最好的日子是从一个微笑和积极的想法开始的。还有煎饼、草莓。" 24岁的时尚博主斯嘉丽-迪克森发布了一张自己吃早餐的照片，而网络评论中却一片恶语。
“Fuck off this is anybody’s normal morning,” wrote Nathan from Cardiff.“Instagram is a ridiculous lie factory made to make us all feel inadequate.” His post has garnered more than 111,000 likes (22 times as many as Dixon’s original).
"滚开，这可不是一般人的正常早晨，"来自卡迪夫的内森写道，"Instagram是一个可笑的谎言工厂，让我们都感到不够好。" 他的帖子获得了超过11万1千个点赞（是迪克森原帖获赞的22倍）。
Instagram looks like the friendliest social network imaginable. It’s a visually led community where the primary method of interaction is double-tapping an image to like it, where posts that go viral tend to do so because of positivity rather than outrage and where many of the biggest accounts are famous dogs and cats. What’s not to like?
Instagram看起来是你能想到的最友好的社交网络。这是一个以视觉为导向的社区，互动的主要方式是双击图片来点赞，帖子往往因为积极性而非义愤而走红，其中许多大用户都是著名的狗和猫。有什么不喜欢的?
Grumpy——大名鼎鼎的“不爽猫”
But, for a growing number of users – and mental health experts – the very positivity of Instagram is precisely the problem. The site encourages its users to present an upbeat, attractive image that others may find at best misleading and at worse harmful.
但是，越来越多的用户和心理健康专家说，Instagram的积极性正是问题所在。该网站鼓励其用户展示一个乐观的、有吸引力的形象，而轻则可能误导其他用户，重则会对他们有害。
There is growing support for the idea that Instagram isn’t great for its users’ mental health.
越来越多的人认为Instagram对其用户的心理健康没有好处。
For Stephen, a 24-year-old from London, the unreality led him to develop unhealthy behaviours online. “I was going through a bit of heartbreak at the time,” he says, “and any experience of seeing my ex’s name on Instagram killed me."
24岁的斯蒂芬来自伦敦，对他来说，这种不真实感让他在网上养成了不健康的行为。“在那时我有点伤心，”他说，“每次在Instagram上看到我前任的名字都会让我崩溃。"
Stephen then took a year-long break from the app, during which he wrote a dissertation on its harmful effects on wellbeing and body satisfaction.
之后，斯蒂芬花了一年时间脱离这款应用，在这段时间里，他写了一篇关于它对幸福感和身体满意度的有害影响的论文。
Almost every user adds fuel to the flames. Even as we’re being made miserable by the unreal lives , we share an unreal version of our own lives.
几乎每个用户都在火上浇油。即使我们被不真实的生活弄得痛苦不堪，我们也分享着自己不真实的生活。
“I have been on Instagram since 2013 and in the beginning I enjoyed it,” says Adnan, a 25-year-old Syrian. “But, as the years passed, it changed from being a friendly environment, where most people posted food pictures, into a competitive social platform where everyone filters out their lives to represent a life that does not exist. Nobody looks good all the time, nobody is always happy. When things get tough, I get really upset when I see other people having the ‘perfect’ life.”
25岁的叙利亚人阿德南说:“我从2013年就开始使用Instagram，一开始我很喜欢。但是，随着时间的流逝，它从一个友好的环境，大多数人在这里发布食物照片，变成了一个竞争激烈的社交平台，每个人都过滤掉自己的生活，来表现不存在的完美生活。没有人总是看起来很好，没有人总是快乐的。当事情变得艰难，我看到其他人过着'完美'生活时，我真的很难过。”
In 2017, the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH), an independent charity that seeks to improve people’s wellbeing, conducted a UK-wide survey of 14- to 24-year-olds. Users ranked how their use of the the big five social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram) affected everything from the quality of their sleep to their Fomo – the fear of missing out on what others are enjoying.
2017 年，英国皇家公共卫生学会 (RSPH) ，一家旨在提高人们健康水平的独立慈善机构，在英国对 14 至 24 岁的年轻人开展了一项调查。用户将五大社交媒体平台（Twitter 、Facebook、YouTube、Snapchat 和 Instagram）对他们生活的各方面，从睡眠质量到FOMO错失恐惧症（害怕错过任何精彩的瞬间）的影响进行排序。
Instagram came last, scoring particularly badly for its effects on sleep, body image and Fomo.
Instagram 位列最后一名，其中针对睡眠、身材和错失恐惧症的得分尤其糟糕。
What has changed to spark such a backlash?
是什么引发了如此强烈的抵制？
One event was cited time and again: the introduction, in mid-2016, of Instagram’s algorithmic timeline. Rather than presenting users with a cross-section of what the people they were following were up to at any given moment, Instagram began populating feeds with the most noteworthy posts from those accounts, often reaching back days or even weeks to pull in particularly compelling content.
instagram的一个改变需要再次被提及：2016 年Instagram 引入了算法时间线， 不再向用户展示他们所关注的人在任何特定时刻的行为，而是开始用这些帐户中最值得关注的帖子充斥用户的界面，而这些帖子通常是数天甚至数周之前发布的特别引人注目的内容。
Talya Stone, a parenting blogger says “The whole point of these social platforms is that they are supposed to enhance social connectivity – yet, bizarrely, they are based on an algorithm that seems to be working against this very notion.”
育儿博主塔莉亚·斯通表示，“社交平台的意义应该是增强社交连接性——但奇怪的是，它们基于的算法似乎与这一理念背道而驰。”
Victoria Hui, a lifestyle blogger, says there is another issue affecting “pro” Instagram users – those who make a living (or hope to) from advertising and sponsorship. “The new algorithm creates a popularity contest between creators, so that they resort to unethical business decisions in order to keep themselves at the top of the food chain.”
生活博主Victoria Hui认为，还有一个问题会影响到“专业”的Ins用户——那些通过广告和赞助来谋生（或希望以此谋生）的用户。“新算法在创作者之间制造了一场人气竞赛，使他们诉诸于不道德的商业决策，以保持自己在食物链顶端。”
Unscrupulous creators started buying followers, likes and comments in an attempt to fool the algorithm; as Instagram clamped down on that, Hui says, those users started to share “each and every post with each other in order to generate ‘authentic’ and immediate engagement”.
不择手段的创作者开始买粉丝、买赞和买评论，试图骗过算法。Hui说，随着Ins对这一点的监管打击，这些用户又开始“彼此分享帖子来获得‘真实’和即时的参与效果”。
I stopped using the app earlier this year, when I realised that I reliably felt worse after opening it than I did before I started.Every time I open the app, I’m presented with an endless feed of my friends and family doing incredible things, having a wonderful time. Meanwhile, I’m doing nothing of note – except sitting on Instagram.
今年早些时候，我开始不再使用ins，因为我意识到：打开使用它，会让我感觉更糟糕。每次打开ins，我都会看到无数的朋友家人玩得很开心。而与此同时，我除了刷Ins，什么都没有做。
It’s true that there is a whole world of information best communicated in a visual medium. While some fitness-focused Instagrams leave you feeling like a fat blob of plasticine, others are sources of useful advice, laser-targeted at people in your situation.
的确，在这个信息世界中，用视觉的媒介来传达是最好的。虽然一些关于健身的Ins会让你感觉自己像一团厚厚的橡皮泥，但其它的Ins则会提供有针对性的实用建议。
I’ve tried that version of Instagram, too, and I worry that it provides only a veneer of engagement.
我也尝试过这种类型的Instagram，但我担心它只是提供了一种参与的表象。
Facebook’s answer
脸书的回应
Even Facebook, Instagram’s owner, warns against using its products in this way. “In general,” the company wrote on its corporate blog last year, “when people spend a lot of time passively consuming information – reading but not interacting with people – they report feeling worse afterward”.
就连Instagram的所有者脸书也警告不要以这种方式使用其产品。“总的来说，”该公司去年在其企业博客上写道，“当人们花费大量时间被动地消耗信息时——阅读但不与人互动——他们说之后感觉会更糟糕。”
Of course, Facebook’s answer was that everyone should post more. But it would say that, wouldn’t it? Another option is to follow the guidance of the RSPH.
当然，脸书的回应是，每个人都应该发布更多的内容。但它一定会这么说，不是吗？另一种选择是遵循英国皇家公共卫生学会的指导方针。
There is one final possibility, proposed by a few others when I shared my own Insta-woes: don’t give up on Instagram, just give up on people.
还有最后一种可行方法，当我分享自己的Ins困境时，其他几个人提出了：不要放弃Instagram，只要放弃人类就可以了。
There are enough dogs, cats, birds, otters and ferrets to fill a social network of their own – from Jiro the otter to Gotcha the cockatoo – and it’s very hard to scroll through pet Instagram and feel bad about yourself.
有足够的狗，猫，鸟，水獭和雪貂来填充自己的社交网络 ——从水獭Jiro到凤头鹦鹉Gotcha——你很难在滚动Instagram浏览宠物时对自己感到难过。
凤头鹦鹉Gotcha
Though you may start wishing for a more photogenic labradoodle.
虽然你可能会开始希望有一只更上镜的拉布拉多。
重点词汇
backlash：（对社会变动等的）强烈抵制，集体反对
a strong negative reaction by a large number of people, for example to sth that has recently changed in society
eg. The government is facing an angry backlash from voters over the new tax.
政府正面临选民对新税项的强烈反对。
bizarrely：稀奇古怪地
eg.Bizarrely teachers claim sitting exams outside also help prevent cheating.
令人比较诧异的是，老师们认为在户外考试还可以防止学生作弊。
resort to：诉诸;使用(武力)
eg.There are hopes that the conflict can be resolved without resort to violence.
冲突有望不需要诉诸武力而得到解决。
unscrupulous：肆无忌惮的;肆无忌惮;不择手段的;不道德的;黑店
eg.He is an unscrupulous rogue. No one believes him.
他是一个刁滑之徒，没有人相信他。
veneer：n.饰面，护面; 外饰，虚饰
eg. Her veneer of politeness began to crack.
她那彬彬有礼的伪装开始露馅儿了。
原文地址：
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/17/instagram-is-supposed-to-be-friendly-so-why-is-it-making-people-so-miserable
编译 | 毛彦文 陈俞彣 章鑫依 王柯琪 陈莲旖
排版 | 陈莲旖
