When I was a child, I would sometimes lie in bed imagining what superhero powers I wished to possess. A cloak of invisibility? The ability to fly? The strength to lift cars? These seemed the most attractive options for a kid in 1970s Britain who adored sci-fi, Superman and Doctor Who.

当我还是个孩子的时候，有时会躺在床上想象自己想要拥有怎样的超人能力。隐身斗篷？能够飞翔？举起汽车的力量？对上世纪70年代的儿童来说，这些似乎是最具吸引力的选项，那时的英国人酷爱科幻小说、《超人》(Superman)和《神秘博士》(Doctor Who)。

No longer. Last weekend I went out to a shopping mall in a far-flung corner of suburban New Jersey, to accompany my tween daughter and friend to a “concert” of five wildly popular female YouTube stars named MyLifeAsEva, Meredith Foster, Alisha Marie, Mia Stammer and Sierra Furtado (no, I hadn’t heard of them before either).

那些日子已成为过去。上周末，我来到新泽西郊区偏远角落的一家购物中心，陪着10来岁的女儿和她的朋友参加一场由5位广受欢迎的YouTube女明星表演的“演唱会”。她们的名字分别叫MyLifeAsEva、梅雷迪斯輠斯特(Meredith Foster)、阿丽莎鬠丽(Alisha Marie)、米娅施塔默(Mia Stammer)和塞拉弗塔多(Sierra Furtado)——没听说过吧，我以前也从未听说过她们。

Halfway through this event, over the cacophony of screaming tweens, one of the stars posed the question that I used to ask: “What superhero power would you like?”

演唱会进行到一半的时候，其中一位明星压过孩子们的尖叫声，提出了一个我小时候问过的问题：“你们喜欢怎样的超人能力？”

Not for them anything as dull as mere invisibility. Instead, one of the YouTubers declared she wanted “WiFi pulsing everywhere!” — and the crowd cheered. The ultimate superpower dream for this generation, in other words, is unlimited, ultra-high-speed internet — presumably complemented by a smartphone battery that never runs out.

他们可不想要隐身术之类无趣的能力。取而代之的是，一名演唱者宣称她想要“无处不在的WiFi！”——人群随即欢呼起来。换句话说，这一代人的终极超人梦想就是无限的、超高速的互联网——想必最好还有永不耗尽的智能手机电池。

Welcome to 21st-century teen and tween culture — and a social challenge that confronts us all. When I was growing up, phones were something that kids occasionally used — and a “concert” was a place where an audience watched other people perform. But today’s kids are super-glued to their smartphones, whenever their parents let them (and they can access WiFi). And concerts are no longer just about watching “stars”. Far from it.

欢迎来到21世纪青少年文化——一项我们全都要面对的社会挑战。在我成长的年代，孩子偶尔才会用到电话，“音乐会”是观众欣赏别人表演的地方。但今天孩子们对自己的智能手机可谓寸步不离，只要父母允许他们携带手机（而且可以连上WiFi）。而音乐会不再仅限于欣赏“明星”。远非如此。

At the “Girls’ Night In” (GNI) show that I saw last Saturday, for example, the YouTube stars certainly knew how to perform: their antics left the audience screeching with all the gusto of a Beatles concert decades earlier. But singing was only a small part of the show; what they mostly did was chat with their audience and each other.

例如，在我最近观看的“女生之夜”(Girls’ Night In)演出中，YouTube明星的确知道如何表演：她们嬉戏的动作使观众尖叫，煽起几十年前披头士(Beatles)演唱会上的那般热情。但唱歌只占这场演出的一小部分；她们主要做的是跟观众、以及相互聊天。

However, the important element of this show — at least for the tweens — was that the event and audience were being filmed for an online video, and everyone in the hall was taking selfies to be posted online. And what made it doubly exciting for the tweens was that the show blended “cyber” and “real” space in a striking way.

然而，这场表演重要元素——至少对这些孩子们来说——是演出和观众都在网上直播，大厅里每个人都正在自拍，然后发到网上。让这些孩子更加兴奋的是这场演出以令人瞩目的方式融合了“网络”与“真实”空间。

My daughter and her friends have become passionate fans of stars like Alisha Marie because they have seen their YouTube videos on the internet (apparently, the GNI crowd have some 13 million followers). But they were desperate to go to New Jersey, to see the GNI group on tour, to experience the stars “in the flesh”. “They touched my hand!” they shrieked, when the YouTubers reached into the crowd. But no sooner had the girls in that auditorium seen those stars in “real” life than they felt compelled to jump into cyber space again — by taking selfies to post online. Adults may think there is a distinction between “real life” and “cyber space”; for today’s kids, these worlds blur.

我女儿和她的朋友们已经成了阿丽莎鬠丽之类明星的铁杆粉丝，因为她们在网上看过这些明星的YouTube视频（显然，GNI组合有约1300万粉丝）。但她们还是不顾一切地来到新泽西，观看GNI组合的巡演，亲眼见到这些明星。当几位YouTube明星来到人群中时，孩子们尖叫道：“她们摸到我的手啦！”但这些女孩们刚在“现实”生活中见到这些明星，就再次一头扎进网络空间中——自拍并发上网。成年人可能认为“真实生活”与“网络空间”有区分；但对于今天的孩子们来说，两个世界间的界限是模糊的。

Is this a bad thing? Like many parents, I feel bewildered — and torn. One reason I went along to the concert last weekend was that I wanted to understand more about the stars that my kids suddenly seem to adore. And having endured two hours of high-pitched screeching (and bad pizza), I can report that the overt message from these particular YouTubers seems pretty harmless: Alisha Marie, for example, tells her girl fans to keep a sense of humour about high school, to “believe in yourself”, “love what makes you!” — and “accept the body you have!” As self-help messages go, it is probably healthier than the content I absorbed from films and books at that age.

这是件坏事吗？同很多家长一样，我感到困惑和纠结。我跟女儿一起去这场音乐会的原因之一是，我想更多地了解这些孩子们突然开始崇拜的明星。在忍受了两小时的高声尖叫（和糟糕的披萨）后，我可以得出结论，这几个YouTube明星公开传达的信息看起来相当无害：例如，阿丽莎鬠丽告诉她的女孩粉丝要对高中保持幽默感，要“相信自己”、“爱你成长的环境！”以及“接受自己的形体”。就励志信息而言，这可能比我小时候从电影和书中吸收的内容更加健康。

But what disturbs me is the topic that Sherry Turkle, an American author, describes in an important new book, Reclaiming Conversation: a fear about what all this cyber culture is doing to kids’ minds and social skills. A world where everyone is constantly taking selfies seems, to my generation, to be one that is unpleasantly narcissistic. And an era when kids assume that they need to be permanently “online”, or in performance mode, also seems a place that breeds very shallow conversations.

但让我感到不安的是美国作家谢里舠尔克莱尔(Sherry Turkle)在一本重要的新书《拯救对话》(Reclaiming Conversation)中所描述的话题：担忧这种网络文化对孩子们的思想和社交技巧的影响。对我这代人而言，一个所有人都在不断自拍的世界看起来是一个不讨人喜欢、自恋的世界。而且，一个青少年认为他们需要永远保持“在线”（或处于表演状态）的时代，似乎只能产生非常肤浅的对话。

Of course, as Turkle points out, there are plenty of things we can do to control these perils. We can track what our kids do online, limit their time on screens, take away their phones — or go to a New Jersey mall to see with our own eyes what they are watching. But completely banning (and even effectively policing) the internet is tough in a world where so much of life — for adults and kids — is now happening online. So I, like many parents, am frantically trying to understand this new, unfamiliar landscape. And sometimes harbouring secret fantasies about having anti-superhero powers: namely, the ability to switch off that wretched WiFi signal.

当然，正如蒂尔克莱尔指出的，我们可以有很多事情可做来控制这些风险。我们可以追踪孩子们在网上做什么，限制他们的上网时间，收走他们的手机，或者去新泽西的一家商场亲眼看看他们正在看什么。但在一个成人和青少年都在网上进行很大一部分生活的世界，要完全禁止（甚至是有效监管）互联网是不现实的。所以，同很多家长一样，我疯狂地尝试去理解这种新的陌生情形，有时悄悄幻想着拥有反超人力量：关掉该死的WiFi信号的能力。