LinkedIn会不会扼杀童真

    直到Facebook向没有高校或大学电子邮箱的用户开放之后，它才有了今天的成就。Facebook意识到，限制注册资格并不是打造社交媒体业务的明智之举。对于大多数社交媒体来说，规模就代表着一切。

也正是因为这个原因，商务社交网站LinkedIn (LNKD)已向14岁以上的人士开放其服务，同时在打造供LinkedIn新用户考察的“大学网页”。正如《华尔街日报》（the Wall Street Journal ）所说的：

LinkedIn此举并不是为了吸引那些长期浸淫在社交媒体、似乎已经厌倦了Facebook的青少年，而是在效仿通用汽车（General Motors）的老做法：培养客户要从娃娃抓起，一直陪伴他们度过人生的各个阶段。

没有人会相信美国的青少年（在世界其他地区，青少年的最低年龄划分界限为13岁）会抛弃Instagram、Twitter、Facebook、或Ask.fm，转而投向LinkedIn的怀抱。然而，这其中很多人可能会创建个人资料，但随后，他们会和我们大多数人一样，只有等到需要的时候才会使用LinkedIn。

然而，在一些博客们假想的另一种情形中，孩子们在使用LinkedIn后会很快失去自己的童真。在一篇带有些许讽刺口吻、但却看似非常严肃的帖子中，时尚网站Jezebel的凯莉•布斯曼写道：

加入Linkedin的决定无异于是在向世人大声地宣布，“我已经将自己交给成人世界的各种沉闷；或者在看到自然美景之后，我不会再露出孩童般天真的微笑；魔法已经消失”。

（请家长们注意：如果你们家的孩子到了14岁看到彩虹或小马驹时还会露出孩童般天真的笑容，你最好带他/她去看神经科医生。）布斯曼声称：“成为LinkedIn用户是认同自己成为‘年轻职业人士’的第一步，也是悲痛的一步；成为LinkedIn用户意味着人们需要意识到，自己永远也无法成为一位流行明星，一位大腕演员，至少也无法成为那种衣着鲜亮、居住在豪华公寓、似乎从来不用工作的人。”她总结说，公司将用户年龄底线由18岁下调至14岁，意味着LinkedIn已经采取措施，“意欲为童年柔弱的梦想设置更多的禁锢。”

啊，是的。童年的时候，渴望成名的天真梦想似乎是可以实现的。而如今，人们会问，《单身女郎》（The Bachelorette，美国真人约会节目，意思说大人们变得很现实——译注）什么时间再播出来着？同时，科技媒体TechCrunch的乔什•康斯丁在表达对LindedIn的不满时更为直接。他提到，LinkedIn对于保护青少年用户的隐私特别在意，但是，“公司是否考虑过职业规划给刚进入青春期的孩子所带来的精神、发育和情感方面的影响呢？”

    Facebook (FB) wasn’t much until it opened itself up to people who didn’t have a current email address issued by a college or university. Restricting access isn’t a great way to build a social media business, Facebook realized. For most social media, scale is everything.

That’s why LinkedIn (LNKD) has opened its service up to people 14 and above and is creating “University Pages” for the new LinkedIn members to peruse. As the Wall Street Journal put it:

For LinkedIn, it’s less about trying to grab a group of savvy social-media kids allegedly growing bored with Facebook, and more about plying that old General Motors concept: Start out the customers young and stay with them through different stages of their lives.

Nobody should believe that America’s teenagers (the minimum age is 13 in some other parts of the world) are going to flock away from Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or Ask.fm and toward LinkedIn. But a lot of them might create a profile, and then basically leave LinkedIn alone until they need it for something, like most of us do.

In another scenario, one created in the minds of some bloggers, kids will surrender their childhoods immediately upon joining. In a post that rings some ironic tones but seems to be entirely serious, Jezebel’s Callie Beusman wrote:

Nothing says “I’ve resigned myself to all the dreary bits of adulthood; never again will I gurgle with childish joy at some delightful sight in nature; there is no such thing as magic” quite as clearly as the decision to make oneself a LinkedIn.

(Note to parents: If your 14-year-old is gurgling with childish joy over a rainbow or a horsie, you might want to take him or her to a neurologist.) “Making a LinkedIn,” Beusman declared, “is a sad first step towards identifying oneself as a ‘young professional;’ making a LinkedIn means realizing that you are never going to be a pop star or a very famous actor or, at the very least, someone who wears fashion culottes and lives in a very nice apartment despite never seeming to be employed.” LinkedIn, she concludes, has “taken a step to limit the tender glimmer of childhood even more” by lowering the minimum age from 18 to 14.

Ah, yes. Childhood. When innocent dreams of fame still seem obtainable. Now, what time is The Bachelorette on again?Over at TechCrunch, meanwhile, Josh Constine was much more earnest with his umbrage. He noted that LinkedIn is being particularly careful to protect younger users’ privacy, but “what about the mental, developmental and emotional impact of plotting your career just as you hit puberty?

    他接着说：“以前有个好成绩，暑假找个暑期工就够了。但是要不了多久，孩子就会变得麻木不仁。你在哪实习过？你创建过什么学生俱乐部？你选择的是机器人学还是计算机科学？”

所有这些都无异于是在推断：a.)青少年目前还没有这方面的压力，不用去思考这些事情；b.)LinkedIn不仅在强迫他们加入，而且还让他们的对个人资料进行筛选，然后将自己推向自己不感兴趣的职业。

更有可能的是，世界上像亚历克斯•奇顿（80年代美剧Family Ties的主角，是一个有远大抱负的孩子——译注）这样的孩子会蜂拥加入LinkedIn，而像巴特•辛普森（没有什么追求的孩子——译注）这样的孩子和其他很多孩子都会对LinkedIn敬而远之。更有甚者，他们可能连LinkedIn这个名字都没听说过。我们可以据此推测，在LinkedIn创建账户的17岁青少年要比14岁青少年多。但是，一些14岁的孩子（例如像亚历克斯•奇顿这样的孩子）希望从现在就着手规划自己大学的职业生涯，我们为什么要阻止他们做呢？

因为，康斯丁警告说：“问题并不在于青少年为了填满其LinkedIn个人资料而去做某些事，而是他们在选择做某件事之前，会首先以那些浏览网页的招聘者和大学招生办官员假想的眼光来审视自己。这会强迫他们依据他人的想法来做决定，而不是依据自己的爱好……”

“这些想法可能会埋没下一个毕加索或奥巴马。”

天哪，由此而得到的推论是，如果LinkedIn出现在上个世纪初的话，帕布罗•毕加索可能会选择做注会这一行。或者我们应该说，这看起来不大可能。然而，即便是可能的，难道还有比“1901-1904：蓝色时期”（毕加索在这个时期的作品中运用了大量的蓝色——译注）更好的LinkedIn个人介绍吗？很多艺术家和演员也在LinkedIn上填写个人资料，但这些人一直在追逐自己的梦想。

我们可以肯定，如果LinkedIn在上个世纪70年代末就出现了的话，奥巴马总统会成为它的拥趸。他在哥伦比亚大学获得政治学和国际关系学位之前，在夏威夷参加了大学预科班。他的第一份工作是在商业国际公司（Business International Corp）上班，而这种工作听起来就像是剧集中亚历克斯•奇顿最终可能从事的工作。作为一名芝加哥社团组织者，奥巴马曾为贫困儿童设立了大学预科计划。然后他去了哈佛大学法学院。

政治右翼势力经常将奥巴马担任社团组织者期间的所作所为描述为某种准马克思主义，一种对美国价值观的践踏，而且带有反建制情绪。但是，事实恰恰相反。在他的大部分时间中，他一直在为工作培训项目争取资金和政治支持，同时为贫困地区的儿童创造优势机遇。他希望这些孩子能在资本主义体制下获得成功。

    “It used to be enough to get good grades and a summer job,” he continued. “Soon that could leave kids looking like slackers. Where are your internships? What student club did you start? Have you chosen between robotics and computer science?”

All of this tacitly presumes that a.) teenagers aren’t already pressured to think about these things, and b.) that LinkedIn is somehow forcing them to not only join but to tailor their profiles to push them toward careers they’re not interested in.

What seems more likely is that the Alex P. Keatons of the world are going to flock to LinkedIn, while the Bart Simpsons — and many others — will avoid it, if they ever even hear about it. Presumably, more 17-year-olds will create profiles than will 14-year-olds. But some 14-year-olds (the Alex P. Keatons) will want to get a jump on their college careers, so why not let them?

Because, Constine warns: “The problem isn’t teens doing things that could fill out their LinkedIn profile. It’s them choosing what to try after judging themselves through the hypothetical eyes of recruiters and college admissions officers lurking the web. That could pressure them into making decisions based on what others want, rather than what excites them …

“These thoughts could derail the next Picasso or Obama.”

Oh, my. The presumption here is that if LinkedIn were around at the turn of the last century, Pablo Picasso might have opted for a career in chartered accountancy. That seems, shall we say, unlikely. But even if not, what would look better on a LinkedIn profile than “1901-1904: Blue Period?” There are lots of profiles on LinkedIn by artists and performers — people who have followed their muse.

And there’s little doubt that President Obama (sort of Keatonesque himself but much less mercenary) would have been all over LinkedIn if it were available to him in the late 1970s. He attended a college prep school in Hawaii before getting degrees in poli sci and international relations at Columbia. His first job was at Business International Corp, which sounds like it could be a fictional company where Alex P. Keaton would have eventually landed. As a community organizer in Chicago, Obama managed college-prep programs for poor kids. Then he went to Harvard for law school.

Obama’s time as a community organizer is often portrayed by the political right as some kind of quasi-Marxist, anti-establishment assault on American values, but it was really just the opposite. He spent most of his time scrounging funds and political support for job-training programs, and helping kids in poor neighborhoods get a leg up. He wanted them to succeed in the capitalist system..

   有一种观点认为，我们应该尽可能长时间地保护我们的孩子免受真实世界的伤害，而上述内容让这一观点处于一个尴尬的境地。这种观点代表了养尊处优人士的担忧，然而，对于贫困和工薪家庭来说，可能家长们思考得更多的是让孩子免受贫困循环和经济停滞的困扰。虽然LinkedIn中的个人资料不一定能带来多大的帮助，但它肯定不会有害处。

然而，美国青少年对待LinkedIn的方式大概会和成人一样。威尔•莱穆斯在科技杂志Slate中指出：“有一种观念认为，美国的九年级学生将搁置Snapchat聊天应用和Keek在线社交服务，转而蜂拥至LinkedIn去对比教育诚信信息。在我看来，这种观念有可能略微高估了九年级学生的平均心智。更有可能出现的情形是，那些14岁的孩子至少会跟我们一样，觉得LinkedIn只是一个索然无味的网站。”（财富中文网）

    All of which puts the notion that we should protect our kids from the “real world” for as long as possible in an interesting context. Such are the concerns of the comfortable. Poor and working-class families, meanwhile, might be a lot more concerned with protecting kids from the cycles of poverty and economic stagnation. Not that a LinkedIn profile will necessarily help very much with that. But it certainly won’t hurt.

Mostly, though, America’s teenagers will take to LinkedIn in much the same way the rest of us have. As Will Oremus put it in Slate, “the assumption that the nation’s ninth-graders are going to drop their Snapchats and Keeks and flock to LinkedIn to compare educational bona fides strikes me as possibly a slight misreading of the average ninth-grade psyche. More likely, 14-year-olds will find LinkedIn at least as boring as the rest of us already do.”