雅思阅读 014 · Social Media and the Collapse of Attention

科技/心理主题。题型：T/F/NG + 选择题。难度：中等偏上（P2）。

🎧 课文朗读音频（约 1 分钟）

正文 Passage

Fifteen years ago, the average teenager read books for pleasure. Today, the average teenager spends more than seven hours a day on a phone, much of it on social media. This shift is not merely a change in habit; it is a transformation of the human attention span, and researchers are only beginning to understand its consequences.

Social media companies do not simply happen to be addictive. They are designed to be. Behind every infinite scroll, every notification, every auto-playing video stands a team of psychologists and data scientists whose job is to keep users on the platform as long as possible. The business model — advertising — depends on attention, and the most effective way to capture attention is to feed the brain a continuous stream of novelty.

The effect on young minds is measurable. Studies of adolescents who use social media for more than seven hours a day show lower scores on tests of sustained attention, poorer performance in school, and higher rates of anxiety and depression. Correlation is not causation, and researchers are careful not to overstate the case. But the timing is hard to ignore: as social media use rose, adolescent mental health declined, in almost exactly the same proportion.

The problem is not just screen time. It is the nature of the content. A book demands sustained attention for hours. A social media feed offers a new stimulus every few seconds, training the brain to expect constant novelty. Over time, the ability to focus on anything that does not provide immediate reward — a textbook, a conversation, a long walk — begins to fade. This is the cognitive equivalent of becoming out of shape: the capacity is still there, but it takes effort to use it.

Some schools have responded by banning phones in classrooms, and some countries have restricted social media use for children under a certain age. These measures help, but they treat the symptom rather than the cause. The deeper question is whether a business model built on capturing and reselling human attention can coexist with a society that needs its citizens to be able to read, think and concentrate.

题目 Questions

Questions 1-3: Choose the correct letter.

1. Why are social media platforms addictive?

• A. users are weak-willed
• B. they are intentionally designed to hold attention
• C. they are free
• D. they contain books

2. According to the passage, adolescents who use social media for 7+ hours a day show:

• A. better school performance
• B. lower sustained attention and poorer mental health
• C. no measurable differences
• D. improved reading skills

3. The "cognitive equivalent of becoming out of shape" suggests that:

• A. the ability to focus is permanently lost
• B. the ability still exists but takes effort to use
• C. exercise is more important than reading
• D. young people should stop using phones entirely

Questions 4-7: T/F/NG

4. Social media companies hire data scientists to keep users on the platform.

5. All researchers agree that social media causes depression.

6. A book provides a new stimulus every few seconds.

7. Some schools have banned phones in classrooms.

Questions 8-10: Complete the notes. NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS.

• The business model of social media depends on (8) ____________.
• A social media feed offers a new (9) ____________ every few seconds.
• The deeper question is whether the (10) ____________ model can coexist with a society that needs concentration.

答案 Answers

核心词汇

attention / social media / addiction / notification / adolescent / anxiety / depression / sustained / stimulus / novelty / cognitive / ban / symptom