1 . ①A group of 41 states and the District of Columbia began a legal case against Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, insisting that the company knowingly used features on its platforms to cause children to overuse them. The accusations in the lawsuit raise a deeper question about behavior: Are young people becoming addicted to social media and the internet? Here’s what the research has found.
②David Greenfield, a psychologist and founder of the Center for Internet and Technology Addiction in West Hartford, Conn, said the devices tempt users with some powerful approaches. One is “intermittent reinforcement,” which creates the idea that a user could get a reward at any time. But when the reward comes is unpredictable. Adults are easily influenced, be noted, but young people are particularly at risk, because the brain regions that are involved in resisting temptation and reward are not nearly as developed in children and teenagers as in adults. Moreover, the adolescent brain is especially accustomed to social connections, and social media is all a perfect opportunity to connect with other people.
③For many years, the scientific community typically defined addiction in relation to substances, such as drugs, and not behaviors, such as gambling or internet use. That has gradually changed. In 2013, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the official reference for mental health conditions, introduced the idea of internet gaming addiction.
④A subsequent study explored broadening the definition to “internet addiction.” The author suggested further exploring diagnostic criteria and the language, for instance, noting that terms like “problematic use” and even the word “internet” were open to broad interpretation, given the many forms the information and its delivery can take.
⑤Dr. Michael Rich, the director of the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital, said he discouraged the use of the word “addiction” because the internet, if used effectively and with limits, was not merely useful but also essential to everyday life.
⑥Greenfield agreed that there clearly are valuable uses for the internet and that the definition of how much is too much can vary. But he said there also were obvious cases where immoderate use disturbs school, sleep and other vital aspects of a healthy life. “Too many young consumers can’t put it down, ” he said.“ The internet, including social media like Meta, are the drugs affecting the mind.”
1. What was Meta accused of?| A．It added problematic features to its platform. |
| B．It started a discussion to mislead young people. |
| C．It tempted children to use social media too much. |
| D．It conducted illegal research on its parent company. |
| A．their under-developed brain |
| B．the random pattern of rewards |
| C．their desire to be socially connected |
| D．the possibility of escaping from reality |
| A．Addiction is something about behaviors instead of substances. |
| B．The online language can be interpreted from a broad perspective. |
| C．Current diagnostic criteria of “internet addiction” isn’t satisfactory. |
| D．There should be an agreement on the definition of the word “internet”. |
| A．proper use of the internet does good to children |
| B．the internet is to blame for disturbing healthy life |
| C．there are cases against immoderate use of the internet |
| D．the word “addiction” is improperly used on the internet |
2 . One of the curious things about social networks is the way that some messages, pictures, or ideas can spread like wildfire while others that seem just as catchy or interesting barely register at all
Before you go deep into the puzzle, consider this: If you measure the height of your male friends, for example, the average is about 170 cm. You are 172 and your friends are all about the same height as you are. Indeed, the mathematical concept of “average” is a good way to capture the nature of this data set.
But imagine that one of your friends was much taller than you. This person would dramatically skew the average, which would make your friends taller than you, on average. In this case, the “average” is a poor way to capture this data set.
Exactly this situation occurs on social networks. On average, your coauthors will be cited more often than you, and the people you follow will post more frequently than you and so on.
Now Lerman from University of Southern Caledonia has discovered a related paradox, which they call the majority illusion (多数错觉). They illustrate this illusion with an example. They take 14 nodes linked up to form a small network. They then color three of these nodes and count how many of the remaining nodes link to them in a single step.
In situation (a), the uncolored nodes see more than half of their neighbors as colored. This is the majority illusion—the local impression that a specific feature is common when the global truth is entirely different. While in situation (b) the majority illusion doesn’t occur.
So how popular is it in the real world? It’s found out that the majority illusion occurs in almost all network scenarios. “The effect is largest in the political blogs network, where 60% of nodes will have majority active neigbbours, even when only 20% of the nodes are truly active,” says Lerman.
It immediately explains many interesting phenomena. For a start, it shows how some content can spread globally while other similar content does not—the key is to start with a small number of well-connected early adopters fooling the rest of the network into thinking it is common. The affected nodes then find it natural to follow the trend. A real spread finally comes into being.
But it is not yet a marketer’s charter. For that, marketers must first identify the popular nodes that can create the majority illusion for the merger audience. These influencers must then be persuaded to adopt the desired behavior or product, which is essential to the prospect of the marketing plan.
1. The phrase “skew the average” in the 3rd paragraph most probably refers to the action of __________.| A．hiding the real average to be unrecognizable to others |
| B．producing an average against the general feature of data |
| C．working out the common feature suggested by the average |
| D．ignoring the average because of the frequency by which it is reviewed |
| A．The number of the nodes in the network |
| B．The manner of the connection between the nodes. |
| C．The decision of which nodes to be colored. |
| D．The influence of the network on the nodes. |
| A．Majority illusion rarely bas impacts except in political blogs field. |
| B．The majority illusion on social networks relies on it that people you follow post more than you |
| C．The essence of successful opinion spread is to initiate the trend with well-connected sharers. |
| D．The spread scale of ideas on networks mainly depends on the quality of content. |
| A．thoroughly understand the concept of majority illusion |
| B．accurately figure out who is the powerful person to affect others |
| C．definitely decide who are the target audience for the promotion |
| D．successfully convince the influencers to practice certain action |
| A．The social network vision that tricks your mind. |
| B．Who is stealing your network identity? |
| C．Minority network opinion spread, curse or blessing? |
| D．Have you been misled during the last political voting? |
3 . The Great PowerPoint Panic of 2003.
Sixteen minutes before touchdown on the morning of February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia (“哥伦比亚”号航天飞机)
The immediate
By the start of 2003, the phrase “death by PowerPoint” had well and truly entered the
Wired ran an excerpt (节选) from Tufte’s booklet in September 2003 under the headline “PowerPoint Is Evil.” A few months later, The New York Times Magazine included his assessment — summarized as “PowerPoint Makes You Dumb” — in its
Despite the backlash it inspired in the
On its face at least, the idea that PowerPoint makes us stupid looks like a textbook case of misguided technological doomsaying. Today’s concerns about social media somehow resemble the PowerPoint critique. Both boil down to a worry that new media technologies
| A．disappeared | B．disintegrated | C．distributed | D．disappointed |
| A．side | B．cause | C．feature | D．issue |
| A．collected | B．unified | C．dropped | D．single |
| A．discounted | B．viewed | C．accessed | D．founded |
| A．muted | B．absorbed | C．buried | D．sunk |
| A．technical | B．popular | C．negative | D．special |
| A．possibly | B．reasonably | C．ordinarily | D．necessarily |
| A．accommodated | B．combined | C．distinguished | D．enhanced |
| A．abstract | B．repetition | C．review | D．brief |
| A．press | B．publication | C．media | D．criticism |
| A．opened | B．created | C．threw | D．jumped |
| A．rules | B．harmonizes | C．impacts | D．roars |
| A．feature | B．encourage | C．value | D．defend |
| A．Therefore | B．However | C．Certainly | D．Surprisingly |
| A．difference | B．truth | C．time | D．concern |
1．你遇到的情况；
2．智能手机的利与弊；
3．你的看法和倡议。
注意：
1．词数100左右；
2．可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
Dear Editor,
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Yours sincerely,
Li Hua
Instagram Concerns
Although the popular social media APP Instagram can be used in many positive ways, there are significant risks to your child that all parents should be aware of.
Many Instagram users are known for their perfectly posed and edited photos of delicate life. The line between reality and what is posted on social media is often vague. Teens often find it impossible not to compare their appearance, belongings, status, and lifestyle to the lives of those they follow. It is so easy for a child to become consumed by this constant comparison. If your child has gathered a large Instagram following or does not have proper settings turned on, shared information may be public for all to see. Although content showed in your child's Instagram feed is tailored toward their browsing history and interests, it is possible they could encounter potentially inappropriate subject matter.
Feeling concerned or worried? Rather than banning your child from the platform entirely, you might consider the following:
When a child spends too much time viewing life through the images of others, they can forget to take the time to truly live their own life. Encourage your child to incorporate plenty of screen-free and Instagram-free time into their daily lives. One way you can influence your child to develop a healthy relationship with social media is by demonstrating one yourself. Set aside your own screen-free time each day. Also, it is crucial that, as a parent, you understand your child's social media presence and have open and honest conversations about the dangers of self-comparison and oversharing on Instagram. If you notice your child is constantly experiencing the side effects of Instagram-despite your best efforts-take the steps necessary to protect your child. For some, this may mean locking the app on your child's phone until a compromise can be reached.
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6 . In our information-driven society, shaping our worldview through the media is similar to forming an opinion about someone solely based on a picture of their foot. While the media might not deliberately deceive us, it often fails to provide a comprehensive view of reality.
Consequently, the question arises: Where, then, shall we get our information from if not from the media? Who can we trust? How about experts- people who devote their working lives to understanding their chosen slice of the world? However, even experts can fall prey to the allure of oversimplification, leading to the “single perspective instinct” that hampers (阻碍) our ability to grasp the intricacies (错综复杂) of the world.
Simple ideas can be appealing because they offer a sense of understanding and certainty. And it is easy to take off down a slippery slope, from one attention-grabbing simple idea to a feeling that this idea beautifully explains, or is the beautiful solution for, lots of other things. The world becomes simple that way.
Yet, when we embrace a singular cause or solution for all problems, we risk oversimplifying complex issues. For instance, championing the concept of equality may lead us to view all problems through the lens of inequality and see resource distribution as the sole panacea. However, such rigidity prevents us from seeing the multidimensional nature of challenges and hinders true comprehension of reality. This “single perspective instinct” ultimately clouds our judgment and restricts our capacity to tackle complex issues effectively. Being always in favor of or always against any particular idea makes you blind to information that doesn’t fit your perspective. This is usually a bad approach if you would like to understand reality.
Instead, constantly test your favorite ideas for weaknesses. Be humble about the extent of your expertise. Be curious about new information that doesn’t fit, and information from other fields. And rather than talking only to people who agree with you, or collecting examples that fit your ideas, consult people who contradict you, disagree with you, and put forward different ideas as a great resource for understanding the world. If this means you don’t have time to form so may opinions, so what?
Wouldn’t you rather have few opinions that are right than many that are wrong?
1. What does the underlined word “allure” in Para.2 probably mean?| A．Temptation. | B．Tradition. | C．Convenience. | D．Consequence. |
| A．They meet people’s demand for high efficiency. |
| B．They generate a sense of complete understanding. |
| C．They are raised and supported by multiple experts. |
| D．They reflect the opinions of like-minded individuals. |
| A．Simplifying matters releases energy for human brains. |
| B．Constant tests on our ideas help make up for our weakness. |
| C．A well-founded opinion counts more than many shallow ones. |
| D．People who disagree with us often have comprehensive views. |
| A．Embracing Disagreement: Refusing Overcomplexity |
| B．Simplifying Information: Enhancing Comprehension |
| C．Understanding Differences: Establishing Relationships |
| D．Navigating Complexity: Challenging Oversimplification |
注意：词数100左右。
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8 . Why isn’t science better? Look at career incentives.
There are often substantial gaps between the idealized and actual versions of those people whose work involves providing a social good. Government officials are supposed to work for their constituents. Journalists are supposed to provide unbiased reporting and penetrating analysis. And scientists are supposed to relentlessly probe the fabric of reality with the most rigorous and skeptical of methods.
All too often, however, what should be just isn’t so. In a number of scientific fields, published findings turn out not to replicate (复制), or to have smaller effects than, what was initially claimed. Plenty of science does replicate — meaning the experiments turn out the same way when you repeat them — but the amount that doesn’t is too much for comfort.
But there are also ways in which scientists increase their chances of getting it wrong. Running studies with small samples, mining data for correlations and forming hypotheses to fit an experiment’s results after the fact are just some of the ways to increase the number of false discoveries.
It’s not like we don’t know how to do better. Scientists who study scientific methods have known about feasible remedies for decades. Unfortunately, their advice often falls on deaf ears. Why? Why aren’t scientific methods better than they are? In a word: incentives. But perhaps not in the way you think.
In the 1970s, psychologists and economists began to point out the danger in relying on quantitative measures for social decision-making. For example, when public schools are evaluated by students’ performance on standardized tests, teachers respond by teaching “to the test”. In turn, the test serves largely as of how well the school can prepare students for the test.
We can see this principle—often summarized as “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”—playing out in the realm of research. Science is a competitive enterprise. There are far more credentialed (授以证书的) scholars and researchers than there are university professorships or comparably prestigious research positions. Once someone acquires a research position, there is additional competition for tenure (终身教授) grant funding, and support and placement for graduate students. Due to this competition for resources, scientists must be evaluated and compared. How do you tell if someone is a good scientist?
An oft-used metric (标准，度量) is the number of publications one has in peer-reviewed journals, as well as the status of those journals. Metrics like these make it straightforward to compare researchers whose work may otherwise be quite different. Unfortunately, this also makes these numbers susceptible to exploitation.
If scientists are motivated to publish often and in high-impact journals, we might expect them to actively try to game the system (钻空子). And certainly, some do—as seen in recent high-profile cases of scientific fraud (欺诈). If malicious (恶意的) fraud is the prime concern, then perhaps the solution is simply heightened alertness.
However, most scientists are, I believe, genuinely interested in learning about the world, and honest. The problem with incentives is that they can shape cultural norms without any intention on the part of individuals.
1. Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?| A．Scientists are expected to persistently devoted to exploration of reality. |
| B．The research findings fail to achieve the expected effect. |
| C．Hypotheses are modified to highlight the experiments’ results. |
| D．The amount of science that does replicate is comforting. |
| A．The public. | B．The incentive initiators. |
| C．The peer researchers. | D．The high-impact journal editors. |
| A．Good scientists excel in seeking resources and securing research positions. |
| B．Competition for resources pushes researchers to publish in a more productive way. |
| C．All the credentialed scholars and researchers will take up university professorships. |
| D．The number of publication reveals how scientists are bitterly exploited. |
| A．High-impact journals are encouraged to reform the incentives for publication. |
| B．The peer-review process is supposed to scale up inspection of scientific fraud. |
| C．Researchers are motivated to get actively involved in gaming the current system. |
| D．Career incentives for scientists are expected to consider their personal intention. |
| A. untouched | B. preparation | C. disproportionately | D. outlook | E. committed | F. shake |
| G. redirect | H. target | I. reduced | J. expose | K. typically |
Over the past few weeks, many people around the world joined me in celebrating my career firsts — from winning my first Golden Globe to earning my first Oscar. While I am grateful for this unforgettable moment in my professional life, I want to
My life changed eight years ago when one moment shook my
It was April 25, 2015, and I was visiting local organizations. Suddenly, a deadly earthquake hit the country. I have never felt the type of fear and panic I felt that day, when the ground beneath shook so powerfully that I was not able to stand on my own feet.
I was fortunate to make through that day uninjured, but not
Crises are not just moments of disaster: They
To fully recover from a disaster and be prepared for the next one, the specific needs of women and girls must be factored into the humanitarian response.
This year we are halfway toward the 2030
10 . In the fog of uncertainty about how new technology will change the way we work, policymakers around the world have flocked to the same idea. No matter what the future brings, they say confidently, we will need to upskill the workforce in order to cope.
The view sounds reassuringly sensible. If computers are growing smarter, humans will need to learn to use them to humans’ advantage. Otherwise, they may run the risk of being replaced by computers.
Research published by the Social Mobility Commission shows that workers with degrees are over three times more likely to participate in training as adults than workers with no qualifications. That creates a virtuous circle for those who did well at school, and vicious circle for those who did not. If the robots are coming for both the accountants and the taxi drivers, you can bet the bean counters will be more able to retrain themselves out of danger.
It is no good criticizing employers for directing investments at their highly skilled workers. They are simply aiming for the highest return they can get. And, for some types of lower-paid work, it is not always true that technological progress requires more skills. The UK’s latest Employment and Skills Survey, which is performed every five years, suggests the use of literacy and numeracy skills at work has fallen since 2012, even as the use of computers has increased. The trouble is, when the computer makes your job easier one day, it might make it unnecessary the next. Many of those affected by automation will need to switch occupations, or even industries.
It is time to revisit older ideas. The UK once had an energetic culture of night schools, for adults to attend after their day jobs. These institutions have been disappearing due to funding cuts. But a revival of night schools could be exactly what the 21st century needs.
It is still not clear whether the impact of new technology on the labour market will come in a trickle or aflood. But in an already unequal world, continuing to reserve all the lifeboats for the better-off would be a dangerous mistake.
| A．Employers also invest more in better educated workers by launching employer-sponsored cmployee education programs. |
| B．According to an Oxford University study, nowadays employers are more likely to hire the first-year apprentices. |
| C．Rather than just “upskilling” in a narrow way, people could choose to learn an entirely new skill or trade. |
| D．But the truth is, the people who are being “upskilled” in today’s economy are the ones who need it the least. |
| E．People can effectively train or upskill themselves to meet their specific professional needs. |
| F．But a retailer or warehouse company is not going to retrain its staff to help them move to a different sector. |
