Para. 1
Today’s teens drive less — just 25 percent of 16-year-olds in 2020 had a license, as compared with 50 percent in 1983 — and work less, with the share of teens participating in the labor force having declined 17 percentage points since 2000. In short, teens are doing way less of what used to be the activities that bridged the gap between them and adulthood and autonomy.
如今开车的青少年变少了——在2020年，16岁青少年拥有驾照的比例只有25%（注：在美国年满16岁周岁可以考驾照），而在1983年这一比例为50%——工作的青少年也变少了，自2000年以来，加入劳动力大军的青少年比例下降了17个百分点。简而言之，青少年所参与的活动越来越少，而这些活动过去是他们迈向成年和自主的桥梁。
Para. 2
This is where today’s teenagers and young adults differ. Gen Z is not just remaining ensconced for longer in the protective cocoon of adolescence, reliant on their parents for everything from health insurance to transportation to conflict mediation; they also appear to be far less interested in ever leaving the cocoon at all, having persuaded themselves that independence is too fraught with danger to be worth it.
这就是今天的青少年以及年轻人的不同之处。Z世代不仅在青春期的保护茧里待得更久，从医疗保险、交通到冲突调解，事事依赖父母；他们似乎也根本不想离开这个茧，他们让自己相信，独立充满了危险，不值得独立。
Para. 3
So much of what used to be the ordinary friction of existing as a person in the world have been removed via technology. Smartphone technology has so utterly transformed our lives, turning countless points of human contact into computerized transactions, that the old way of doing things can seem not just needlessly complex but actually insane. In the age of swiping and tapping your way to a bespoke pizza order in seconds, you want me to call a phone number and tell some complete stranger who I am, where I live, and what I want to eat?
技术消除了一个人生存于世会经历的许多普通摩擦。智能手机技术彻底改变了我们的生活，将无数与人接触的时刻变成了计算机化的交易，以至于旧的行事方式看起来不仅没必要这么复杂，而且实际上有些疯狂。在这个只需要几秒钟就能划动屏幕点一份定制披萨的时代，你还想让我打电话告诉一个完全陌生的人我是谁，我住在哪里，我想吃什么?
Para. 4
And yet, we did lose something when we started replacing cashiers with contactless payment. One need not be anti-tech to see how our social skills, like any other, atrophy for lack of use in a world where human interaction is on the wane.
然而，当我们开始用非接触式支付取代收银员时，我们确实失去了一些东西。人们不必反对科技，也能看到在一个人际互动日益减少的世界里，我们的社交技能和其他技能一样由于缺乏使用而退化。
Para. 5
Today’s teens and young adults have spent their whole lives being overscheduled and micromanaged. All of this has been well-intentioned. Nobody wants their child to experience trauma — or heartbreak, or failure, or any other kind of hurt. But in seeking to provide kids with a frictionless path through the world, and by teaching them to expect one, we are also sending a powerful message: You can’t handle this. Inadvertently instilled in many of this generation’s kids is a lack of faith in their ability to negotiate discomfort, to recover from emotional wounds, to weather a difficult situation and experience growth as a result; instead, we teach them that bad experiences create permanent trauma and should be avoided at all costs.
当代青少年和年轻人的一生都被过度安排，被事无巨细地管理。所有这些都是出于好意。没有人希望自己的孩子经历创伤——或是心碎，失败，其他任何类型的伤害。但是，在试图为孩子们提供一条畅通无阻的道路，并教导他们期待这样一条道路的同时，我们也在传递一个有力的信息：你处理不了这件事。这一代的许多孩子在无意中被灌输的是他们没有足够的能力克服不适、从情感创伤中恢复、度过困境并最终获得成长；相反，我们教给他们的是糟糕的经历会造成永久性的创伤，应该不惜一切代价避免。
Para. 6
The irony is, the result of all this effort to protect Gen Z from feeling anxious has only made their anxiety worse.
具有讽刺意味的是，所有这些保护Z世代不让他们感到焦虑的努力，结果只会让他们的焦虑更加严重。
Para. 7
Indeed, the world is an uncomfortable place, filled as it is with 8 billion humans who think differently, talk differently, live differently. People of different religious faiths; people of different political persuasions.Living in a society means encountering people who test us, or annoy us, or infuriate us — or to whom we ourselves are tiresome, annoying, and infuriating. Two things are true: that a frictionless world would spare us the duty to tolerate all of these people, and that we would be the worse for it. Perhaps it’s for the better, then, that such a thing is unattainable.
的确，这个世界不是一个舒服的地方，世界上挤满了80亿人，他们的思维方式、说话方式和生活方式都不同。他们有着不同的宗教信仰，不同的政治信仰。生活在社会中意味着我们会遇到考验我们、烦扰我们、激怒我们的人——或者对他们来说，我们令人厌烦，惹人恼火，让人愤怒。有两件事是真的：一个没有摩擦的世界可以让我们不必容忍所有这些人，而我们将因此变得更糟。这样的事情不会发生，或许是件好事。
词汇积累
ensconced [ɪnˈskɑːnst] adj. 舒服地坐于……的，安坐的
cocoon [kəˈkuːn] n. 茧；保护膜，防护层，软罩 v. 把……保护起来
mediation [ˌmiːdiˈeɪʃn] n. 调解，斡旋
fraught [frɔːt] adj. 充满……的
bespoke [bɪˈspoʊk] adj. 订做的
atrophy [ˈætrəfi] v./n. 萎缩，衰退
micromanage [ˈmaɪkroʊmænɪdʒ] v. 微观管理，微观控制
well-intentioned [ˌwelɪnˈtenʃnd] adj. 出于好心的，善意的
trauma [ˈtraʊmə] n. 痛苦，创伤；外伤
weather [ˈweðər] v. 经受住，平安地渡过（困难）；褪色，变形 n. 天气
infuriate [ɪnˈfjʊrieɪt] v. 使极为生气，激怒
tiresome [ˈtaɪərsəm] adj. 讨厌的，令人厌烦的，烦人的
固定搭配
bridge the gap 缩短差距
on the wane 变小，衰落，减弱
at all costs 不惜任何代价
