《10到25岁》第一章(2)：对神经生物学无能模型的质疑和真相运动

说明：我正在连载《10到25岁》这本书的原文和翻译。本文是第一章的第2篇。到目前为止，原文的结构

• 介绍
  • 介绍(1)：导师的困境
  • 介绍(2)：智慧反馈
  • 介绍(3)：10到25岁的大脑
  • 介绍(4)：传奇篮球教练奇普·恩格兰的故事
  • 介绍(5)：家族文化传承之皮特和蕾奥娜的故事
• 第一部分：理解10到25岁的年轻人
• 第一章：我们为啥错了
  • 第一章(1)：花费巨大但效果堪忧甚至反转的干预年轻人的两个项目
  • 本文在这里：对神经生物学无能模型的质疑和真相运动

Questioning Our Model of Young People 对年轻人模型的质疑

Failed attempts to motivate and influence young people—like “Think. Don’t smoke” or the conventional patient-education approach in most transplant clinics —come from what I call the neurobiological-incompetence model. According to this model, a young person is a flawed and deficient thinker who can’t comprehend the future consequences of their actions. Thus, young people need to be told what to think and do repeatedly by adults who know better. Consider, for example, that the tagline “Think. Don’t smoke” is a command from a supposedly wiser and smarter and more responsible adult public health expert, implying that young people aren’t currently thinking.

像“思考，不要吸烟”或大多数移植诊所中传统的患者教育方法一样，试图激励和影响年轻人的失败尝试，都源于我所谓的神经生物学无能模型。根据这一模型，年轻人是一个有缺陷和不完全的思考者，无法理解他们行为的未来后果。因此，年轻人需要更多的由成年人反复告诉他们该思考什么和做什么。例如，考虑一下“思考，不要吸烟”的口号，这是一个来自所谓更聪明、更有责任感的公共卫生专家的指令，暗示年轻人目前并没有在思考。

Over the last two decades, a scientific revolution has been brewing in the study of young people. It’s pushed back against the neurobiological-incompetence model. This revolution asserts that youth are not problems to be managed but instead are resources to be cultivated. This new scientific consensus was spelled out in two major reports. One was issued in 2019 by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine titled The Promise of Adolescence. Another more digestible summary was issued around the same time by the UCLA Center for the Developing Adolescent (CDA) and the FrameWorks Institute. Combined, the reports pulled insights from more than twenty-five leading neuroscientists, hormone experts, psychologists, anthropologists, and more.

在过去的二十年中，年轻人研究领域的科学革命一直在酝酿之中。这场革命反对神经生物学无能模型。它主张年轻人不是需要管理的问题，而是需要培养的资源。这一新的科学共识在两份主要报告中得到了阐述。一份是2019年由美国国家科学院、工程学院和医学院发布的《青春期的承诺》。另一份更易理解的总结报告由加州大学洛杉矶分校青少年发展中心（CDA）和框架研究所同期发布。这两份报告汇集了二十五位以上领先的神经科学家、激素专家、心理学家、人类学家等人的见解。

The UCLA report explained why much of the behavior of young people that worries or annoys us does not come from ten-to-twenty-five-year-olds being inherently incompetent. Rather it comes from this age group’s attempt to learn how to be socially successful in the world. This usually means having social standing in the eyes of their peer groups and their communities’ adult authorities. Said differently, young people want status and respect from peers and mentors, earned by making meaningful contributions. This suggests that if we can understand their perspectives and what they really want, then the same motivational drives that lead to problematic behaviors such as smoking, unhealthy eating habits, or bullying can be channeled instead into important contributions to our organizations, families, schools, and society.

加州大学洛杉矶分校的报告解释了，为什么我们担心或烦恼的年轻人行为，并不是因为十到二十五岁的人本质上无能。相反，这种行为源于这个年龄段的人试图学习如何在世界上取得社交成功：这常常意味着在他们同龄人和社区成年权威眼中拥有社会地位。换句话说，年轻人想要来自同龄人和导师的地位和尊重，并且是通过做出有意义的贡献来赢得的。这表明，如果我们能理解他们的观点，知道他们真正想要的东西，那么导致吸烟、不健康饮食习惯或欺凌等问题的驱动力可以被引导到对我们组织、家庭、学校和社会的重大贡献中。

Dr. Ron Dahl, a University of California, Berkeley physician and neuroscience researcher and cofounder of the Center for the Developing Adolescent, likes to tell a story to illustrate the main takeaway of the landmark UCLA report. The story involves a discussion he had with a diverse group of education scholars, including the Dalai Lama and scholars in Tibetan Buddhist traditions. After Dahl shared some of the emerging insights from the science about puberty and adolescents’ increased motivation to gain status and respect, he heard them chuckle. Through the translator Dahl learned that they often observed young boys demonstrating a hilarious version of the hunt for status and respect. In the Buddhist monastery, the best way to gain prestige and respect is by showing kindness, compassion, and empathy. This led youth to try to outdo each other in these values. I imagine them saying, After you! No, after you!, each trying to one-up the others’ loving-kindness. This was an example where the boys had discerned the cultural currency of status and respect—living a principled spiritual life in service of others. They were intrinsically motivated to distinguish themselves and earn prestige that garners the respect of their community, considering the values of the group. This shows that puberty isn’t destructive; it’s instructive. It fuels young people’s desire to become contributing members of the group. “We shouldn’t fear puberty. We should help youth learn to harness it for good,” Dahl told me.

加州大学伯克利分校的医生和神经科学研究者、青少年发展中心的联合创始人罗恩·达尔博士喜欢讲一个故事来阐明加州大学洛杉矶分校里程碑报告的主要结论。这个故事涉及他与一群多元化的教育学者（包括达赖喇嘛和藏传佛教传统的学者）的讨论。在达尔分享了一些关于青春期和青少年增加获得地位和尊重动机的新兴科学见解后，他听到他们轻声笑了起来。通过翻译，达尔了解到他们经常观察到年轻男孩展示一种滑稽的追求地位和尊重的方式。在佛教寺院中，获得声望和尊重的最佳方式是表现出善良、同情和同理心。这使得年轻人试图在这些价值观上互相超越。我想象他们说，“您先请！不，您先请！”，每个人都试图在慈爱方面超越他人。这是男孩们辨别关于地位和尊重的文化货币——过着为他人服务的有原则的精神生活——的一个例子。他们本能地被激励，去区分自己并通过考虑群体的价值观赢得社区的尊重。这表明青春期不是破坏性的；而是有指导意义的。它激发了年轻人成为群体中有贡献成员的愿望。“我们不应该害怕青春期。我们应该帮助年轻人学会利用它做好事，”达尔告诉我。

Interestingly, one of the best illustrations of this new scientific consensus comes from one of the only public health efforts to have ever shifted smoking behavior: the “Truth” campaign.

有趣的是，这一新科学共识的最佳例证之一来自唯一一个曾经改变吸烟行为的公共卫生努力：“真相”运动。

The “Truth” Campaign “真相”运动

One day in the spring of 1998, the public health establishment’s old guard faced off against the new guard in a meeting that would ultimately drastically improve one of the United States’ longest-standing public health crises.

1998年春天的一天，公共卫生机构的老派与新派在一次会议上对决，这次会议最终极大地改善了美国历史上最长期的公共卫生危机之一。

The meeting was called by officials from the state of Florida, who were trying to select an advertising agency for a multimillion-dollar campaign to reduce teenage smoking. The money would come from a settlement to a class action lawsuit between Florida and the tobacco companies, as compensation for the cost to the state of treating smokers for cancer.

这次会议是由佛罗里达州官员召集的，他们正试图为一场旨在减少青少年吸烟的数百万美元宣传活动选择一家广告公司。这笔钱将来自佛罗里达州与烟草公司之间的一项集体诉讼和解，作为治疗吸烟者癌症的州成本补偿。

On one side of the conference room sat a platoon of conventionally trained government epidemiologists, the scientists who specialize in stopping the spread of diseases. The old guard had been invited to make sure that the winning ad agency upheld the CDC’s so-called approved strategy for stemming the tide of teenage smoking. Across the table sat Alex Bogusky, the creative director at then-upstart advertising agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, which was trying to win the business. The leader of the new guard, Bogusky was in his midthirties but looked ten years younger. He wore an impish grin, and the twinkle in his eye gave the impression that a wild idea lurked just around the corner. His frame was fit and lean from decades of mountain biking and other adventure sports. Next to Bogusky sat his artistic directors, all in their early twenties.

会议室内的一边坐着一排接受传统培训的政府流行病学家，这些科学家专门研究阻止疾病传播。老派被邀请来确保获胜的广告公司遵守针对遏制青少年吸烟的潮流的所谓的疾病控制与预防中心（CDC）批准的策略。会议桌的另一边坐着当时新兴广告公司克里斯平·波特和博古斯基（CP和B）的创意总监亚历克斯·博古斯基，他正试图赢得这笔生意。新派的领导者博古斯基当时三十多岁，但看起来年轻十岁。他带着顽皮的微笑，眼中闪烁着即将出现疯狂想法的光芒。他的身材因数十年的山地自行车和其他冒险运动而健美。博古斯基旁边坐着他的艺术总监们，他们都二十出头。

What was the CDC’s approved strategy? It involved three messages for teenagers: (1) smoking causes cancer, (2) smoking makes your teeth yellow, and (3) smoking isn’t sexy. The CDC wanted Bogusky’s ads to drill this information into as many teenage heads as possible.

CDC批准的策略是什么？它涉及三条针对青少年的信息：（1）吸烟导致癌症，（2）吸烟使牙齿变黄，（3）吸烟不性感。CDC希望博古斯基的广告将这些信息灌输到尽可能多的青少年头脑中。

This approved strategy was the result of the epidemiologists’ hyperrational way of thinking about youth behavior, rooted in classical economic thinking. In this model, people decide something by weighing the relative costs and benefits, as well as an outcome’s likelihood and the time horizon. That is, if teenagers thought that smoking gave them a near-certain likelihood of a benefit in the immediate term (e.g., a nicotine buzz) but a very unlikely cost in the long term (e.g., cancer), then they would tend to choose to smoke. From this perspective, the appropriate public health response is to (1) make long-term costs seem far more certain (e.g., smokers would definitely get cancer) and (2) make near-term costs also seem more certain, such as changes to the teenager’s appearance (yellow teeth) or social life (unsexiness).

这一批准的策略是流行病学家对青少年行为的超理性思考方式的结果，根植于经典的经济思维。在这种模型中，人们通过权衡相对成本和收益以及结果的可能性和时间范围来做出决定。也就是说，如果青少年认为吸烟给他们带来了近期几乎确定的收益（例如，尼古丁兴奋），但长期来看成本非常不确定（例如，癌症），那么他们倾向于选择吸烟。从这一角度来看，适当的公共卫生反应是（1）使长期成本显得更加确定（例如，吸烟者肯定会得癌症），（2）使近期成本也显得更加确定，例如改变青少年的外貌（黄牙）或社交生活（不性感）。

Bogusky thought this whole theory—-and the CDC’s implementation of it—-was doomed to fail. Weeks earlier, he had sent his young art directors undercover to skate parks and malls to test out the CDC’s approved strategy. Fully 100 percent of the teens they talked to could already eloquently describe, lit cigarette in hand, how smoking caused emphysema and cancer. They didn’t need someone to explain that. Were they worried about yellow teeth? Maybe when they were fifty! But not now. And by the way, smoking seemed to them to be a main reason why they were having lots and lots of sex. Smoking made their lives great! This research showed Bogusky that even if his ad campaign brought the CDC’s approved strategy to millions, it wouldn’t stop teens from smoking. It was conveying information that they either already knew to be true or already knew to be false. Not only was it redundant, it was also insulting. Telling a teenager something that they think they already know —especially when it’s an adult doing it “for their own good”—comes across as an affront to their autonomy and competence. It’s disrespectful.

博古斯基认为这一整套理论——以及CDC的实施方式——注定要失败。几周前，他派他的年轻艺术总监们秘密前往滑板公园和购物中心测试CDC批准的策略。他们交谈的青少年中，100%的人都能在手持点燃的香烟时，流利地描述吸烟如何导致肺气肿和癌症。他们不需要别人解释这些。他们担心黄牙吗？也许到五十岁时会担心！但不是现在。顺便说一下，吸烟似乎是他们大量性生活的最主要原因。吸烟让他们的生活变得很棒！这项研究向博古斯基表明，即使他的广告活动将CDC批准的策略传达给数百万人，也不会阻止青少年吸烟。它传达要么是他们已经知道是真实的信息，要么是他们已经知道是虚假的信息。这不仅多余，而且侮辱人。告诉一个青少年他们认为自己已经知道的东西——尤其是当一个成年人“为了他们好”而这样做时——会被视为对他们自主权和能力的冒犯。这是不尊重的。

Back in the conference room, Bogusky watched his words carefully. His firm needed the work. They were small but talented, working with midlevel clients to sell mountain bikes or shoes. The Florida anti-teen-smoking campaign had the potential to be a multimillion-dollar breakthrough. The approved strategy was throwing a wrench in Bogusky’s plans, however. It wasn’t just bland—it was harmful. “This is a double cross from the tobacco companies,” Bogusky told the Florida team. “It’s a backhanded way for the companies to hire me to increase smoking.” He said this because the tobacco settlement had one stipulation: the money had to be spent on telling kids not to smoke. Bogusky thought that strategy would drive millions of teens to smoke more, putting the money back into the tobacco companies’ pockets. “If that’s how you’re spending the settlement money, I don’t want to be a part of it,” Bogusky told them.

回到会议室，博古斯基小心翼翼地选择他的措辞。他的公司需要这份工作。他们规模虽小但才华横溢，与中等级别的客户合作销售山地自行车或鞋子。佛罗里达州反青少年吸烟活动有潜力成为数百万美元的突破。然而，批准的策略却在博古斯基的计划中扔了一个绊脚石。它不仅乏味，而且有害。“这是烟草公司的一个背叛，”博古斯基告诉佛罗里达团队。“这是一种间接的方式，让公司雇用我增加吸烟。”他这么说是因为烟草和解协议中有一项条款：这笔钱必须用于告诉孩子们不要吸烟。博古斯基认为那种策略会导致数百万青少年更多吸烟，把钱重新放回烟草公司的口袋里。“如果你们打算那样花这笔和解金，我不想参与其中，”博古斯基告诉他们。

Bogusky said this because he noticed a far more subtle, but just as fatal, flaw in the CDC’s approved strategy. As far as Bogusky could tell, it was not informed by what young people wanted. Usually the first question ad executives ask themselves is: Do people already want the product, or do they not? There is a reason why cars, beer, and fast food are the crown jewels of most ad executives’ portfolios. These are products that most people already want. The ad just needs to give them permission to buy them, and everybody makes money. Ad campaigns to get people to take health precautions, by contrast, aren’t nearly as successful, for the simple reason that most people don’t want to take health precautions. The CDC’s approved strategy was encouraging teenagers to use self-control to deny themselves something they wanted. Bogusky, and any ad executive worth their salt, knew that a self-denial strategy would lose every time to a strategy geared toward giving people permission to pursue what their hearts most desired.

博古斯基这么说是因为他注意到了CDC批准的策略中一个更微妙但同样致命的缺陷。据博古斯基所知，这一策略并没有基于年轻人所想。通常，广告高管们问自己的第一个问题是：人们已经想要这个产品，还是不想要？这就是为什么汽车、啤酒和快餐是大多数广告公司高管追求的盈利组合的皇冠上的明珠。这些是大多数人已经想要的产品。广告只需给他们购买产品的许可，大家都能赚钱。相比之下，鼓励人们采取健康预防措施的宣传活动并不那么成功，原因很简单，大多数人不想采取健康预防措施。CDC批准的策略鼓励青少年使用自我控制来拒绝他们想要的东西。博古斯基和任何值得尊敬的广告高管都知道，自我否定策略每次都会输给旨在让人们追求内心最渴望的东西的策略。

Bogusky suspected that the CDC experts had no idea what teenagers wanted out of smoking. Therefore they had no idea how to give them an alternative that could displace smoking. That’s why he prodded them, “Have any of you ever asked a teenager why they smoked—like, what they got out of it?” They were silent. Bogusky was disappointed, but he understood why. “They thought teenagers were dumb,” he told me. The CDC experts were coming from what we now know to be the neurobiological-incompetence model—like most public health experts at the time. In that model, the only reason a young person would choose the long-term certain harm (e.g., cancer) over long-term certain health is because of incompetent decision-making. In this view, the teenage brain was myopic, unable to weigh long- term risk correctly. It wouldn’t matter why they made irrational choices. It simply mattered that they were carrying out their mental utility-maximization calculations incorrectly. According to this model, any new ad campaign should feature adults telling them what choice to make.

博古斯基怀疑CDC专家根本不知道青少年从吸烟中得到了什么。因此，他们不知道如何提供一个取代吸烟的替代品。这就是为什么他敦促他们，“你们中有谁曾经问过一个青少年为什么他们吸烟——比如，他们从中得到了什么？”他们沉默了。博古斯基很失望，但他理解为什么。“他们认为青少年很笨，”他告诉我。CDC专家当时正从我们现在所知的神经生物学无能模型出发——像当时大多数公共卫生专家一样。在这种模型中，年轻人选择长期确定的伤害（例如，癌症）而不是长期确定的健康，唯一的原因是因为决策能力不足。在这种观点下，青少年的大脑是短视的，无法正确权衡长期风险。他们为什么做出非理性选择并不重要。重要的是他们正在进行的心智效用最大化计算并不正确。根据这一模型，任何新的广告活动都应该由成年人告诉他们该做出什么选择。

Bogusky’s starting assumption was different. He thought, fundamentally, that teens were smart. They only smoked, he reasoned, because the companies had found a way to present smoking to them as a solution to a problem they cared about. A key fact driving his logic was that about 30 percent of Americans smoked at the time, and just like Terrie Hall about 90 percent of them had started when they were teenagers. Further, most adults wanted to quit but couldn’t because of their addictions. Thus, Bogusky and his team concluded that smoking must have met a uniquely adolescent need, not an adult one. After all, most adults didn’t want to be doing it.

博古斯基的起点假设不同。他认为，从根本上说，青少年是聪明的。他们之所以吸烟，他推理道，是因为公司找到了一种将吸烟呈现为他们关心问题的解决方案的方式。驱动他逻辑的一个关键事实是，当时大约30%的美国人吸烟，就像特丽·霍尔一样，大约90%的人是在青少年时期开始的。此外，大多数成年人想要戒烟但无法戒掉，因为他们上瘾了。因此，博古斯基和他的团队得出结论，吸烟必须满足了一种独特的青少年需求，而不是成年人的需求。毕竟，大多数成年人并不想这么做。

What was that adolescent need? In Bogusky’s analysis, smoking served as a public, visible way for young people to declare their adultlike status. As young people moved from an age at which all their decisions were made for them into an age at which they took charge, teen smokers wanted to communicate to anyone around them that I make my own decisions about my own body. The tobacco companies understood this on a deep level. They knew—and used marketing research to confirm—that smoking shows the world that you are in total control of your life and death. Therefore you have the status and rights afforded to adults. The fact that smoking could kill you in the distant future didn’t make teens feel dumb. It made them feel like courageous advocates of their right to self-determination.

那种青少年需求是什么？在博古斯基的分析中，吸烟作为一种公开、可见的方式，让年轻人宣告他们成人般的地位。当年轻人从一个所有决定都由他人做出的年龄过渡到一个他们自己负责的年龄时，青少年吸烟者想要向周围的任何人传达我决定自己的身体的信息。烟草公司深刻理解这一点。他们知道——并用市场研究证实——吸烟向世界表明你完全掌控着自己的生活和死亡。因此，你有资格获得成年人的地位和权利。吸烟可能在遥远的未来杀死你的事实并没有让青少年觉得自己笨。它让他们觉得自己是勇敢的，支持他们自我决定的权利。

Anthropologists like to point out that our human ancestors often had ceremonies—rites of passage—in which youth declare, in front of their communities, that they were adults. Outside of a few religious and cultural traditions, modern society has lost the rite of passage ceremony. But that doesn’t mean that the underlying need that it served in our evolutionary past has been erased. Smoking filled that void. “Cigarettes were the best product ever to meet teens’ needs to demonstrate their status as adults,” Bogusky told me. “Once we understood that, we were like: Why wasn’t the teen smoking rate one hundred percent?”

人类学家喜欢指出，我们的人类祖先经常有仪式——过渡仪式——在这些仪式中，年轻人向他们的社区宣告他们是成年人。除了少数宗教和文化传统外，现代社会已经失去了过渡仪式。但这并不意味着它在我们的进化过去中所服务的潜在需求被抹去了。吸烟填补了这一空白。“香烟是满足青少年展示其成人地位需求的最棒产品，”博古斯基告诉我。“一旦我们明白了这一点，我们就想：为什么青少年吸烟率不是百分之一百？”

This helps explain why the conventional anti-smoking strategy would never work. You can’t tell a young person to ignore their vital need to demonstrate their competence and status in front of the people whose opinions they care about any more than you can tell a baby to stop being hungry or needing to sleep. If you want to prevent the problematic behavior, you need a replacement that meets the need underlying the behavior. That realization never occurred to the CDC experts. They were blinded by a simplified rational-actor model.

这有助于解释为什么传统的反吸烟策略永远不会奏效。你不能告诉一个年轻人忽略他们向他们关心的人展示其能力和地位的重要需求，就像你不能告诉一个婴儿停止饥饿或需要睡觉一样。如果你想防止这种行为，你需要一个满足行为背后需求的替代品。这一认识从未出现在CDC专家的脑海中。他们被简化的理性行动者模型蒙蔽了双眼。

Bogusky assembled a new approach. He would embolden youth to fight back against the greedy, predatory corporate forces that lured teens into a deadly addiction. “If we were to turn the tables on tobacco, we surmised that we could not take away their tool of rebellion without giving them an alternative,” CP+B’s president, Jeffrey Hicks, wrote in a 2001 article. “Attacking the duplicity and manipulation of the tobacco industry became ‘truth’s’ rebellion.” That day in Miami, like a scene out of Mad Men, Bogusky pitched a brilliant series of ads. The “Truth” campaign, as he wanted to call it, would depict young people exposing the lies of the tobacco companies, acting as passionate agents of change who wanted to be forces for good. The suits from the CDC, so entrenched in the rational-actor model from economics, responded with skepticism. “How do you know it will work?” they asked. “I can’t guarantee it will work,” Bogusky told them, “but I can guarantee that everything you’re planning on doing now will backfire.” He got the green light.

博古斯基拼凑了一个新方法。他鼓励年轻人反击贪婪、掠夺性的企业，这些企业有能力引诱青少年陷入致命的上瘾。“如果我们想扭转烟草的局面，我们推测，我们不能在没有给出替代品的情况下夺走他们的反叛工具，”CP和B的总裁杰弗里·希克斯在2001年的一篇文章中写道。“攻击烟草行业的欺骗和操纵成为‘真相’的反叛。”那天在迈阿密，就像《广告狂人》中的场景一样，博古斯基提议了一系列精彩的广告。他想要称之为“真相”运动，这将描绘年轻人揭露烟草公司的谎言，作为热情的变革代理人，因为他们想成为善的力量。来自CDC的西装革履的官员们，过于根植于经济学中的理性行动者模型，用怀疑来回应。“你怎么知道它会奏效？”他们问。“我不能保证它会奏效，”博古斯基告诉他们，“但我可以保证你们现在计划做的每一件事都会适得其反。”他获得了绿灯。

One of Bogusky’s first “Truth” commercials in Florida showed actors portraying tobacco executives stalking the halls of a hospital on their way to thank a customer who, like Terrie, was on their deathbed. The executives in the commercial wonder aloud, “What are we going to do to replace you?” The executives then turn and stare longingly and creepily at a teenage girl in the waiting room. Another commercial asked, “What’s the connection between a fifty-one-year-old executive and a bunch of teenagers?” Then they cut to a boardroom full of middle-aged executives saying, “They’re our only source of replacement.” An initial evaluation found that Bogusky’s Florida “Truth” commercials reduced middle schoolers’ smoking rates by 19 percent and high schoolers’ by 8 percent.

博古斯基在佛罗里达的第一个“真相”商业广告显示，演员们扮演烟草高管在医院走廊里徘徊，准备去感谢一位像特丽一样的临终顾客。广告中的高管们大声讨论，“我们用谁才能取代你？”高管们然后转向，渴望但诡异地凝视着候诊室里的一位少女。另一则广告问道，“一个五十一岁的主管和一群青少年之间有什么联系？”然后他们切换到一个满是中年主管的董事会会议室，他们说道：“他们是我们的唯一替代来源。”初步评估发现，博古斯基的佛罗里达“真相”商业广告使初中生的吸烟率降低了19%，高中生降低了8%。

One year after the Florida lawsuit was settled, all fifty states signed a master settlement agreement with the tobacco companies, which created a billion-dollar fund to support continued anti-smoking advertising, institutionalizing “Truth” into a lasting initiative. Soon CP+B was making national ads that ran on MTV and during the Super Bowl. The money again had to be spent on telling teens not to smoke, but the settlement added a new stipulation. The ads could not personally attack the tobacco executives. Bogusky’s creative talent got to work. Soon they developed the “Truth” campaign’s most well-known ads. One depicted twelve hundred young people outside a major tobacco company’s high-rise tower. On cue, the young people dropped to the ground, looking dead. The camera panned over the motionless bodies. Silence. Then one young person dramatically held up a sign saying, Tobacco kills 1200 people a day. He told the tobacco companies to “tak[e] a day off.”

在佛罗里达诉讼和解后的一年，所有五十个州都与烟草公司签署了一项总和解协议，该协议创建了一个十亿美元的基金，以支持持续的反吸烟广告，将“真相”制度化为一项持久的倡议。很快，CP和B公司就在MTV和超级碗期间制作了全国性的广告。这笔钱再次必须用于告诉青少年不要吸烟，但和解协议增加了一项新条款。广告不能对烟草高管进行人身攻击。博古斯基的创意才能开始发挥作用。很快，他们开发了“真相”运动最著名的广告。其中一则广告描绘了一千二百名年轻人在一家大型烟草公司的高层塔楼外。随着画面的提示，这些年轻人倒在地上，看起来像死了一样。摄像机扫过不动的身体。沉默。然后，一个年轻人戏剧性地举起一个牌子，上面写着，烟草每天杀死1200人。他告诉烟草公司“休息一天”。

The “Truth” campaign was a stroke of genius. They took the marketing tactic that got teens to start smoking and flipped the script. If a teenager refused to smoke, it didn’t mean they were doing what grown-ups said. It was showing the world they were a rebellious and autonomous person worthy of an adultlike status. By rejecting cigarettes, they could fight back against injustice and protect the vulnerable by joining a chorus of hundreds of peers who approved of them. The campaign ensured that the underlying adolescent needs for belonging, connection, status, and respect were fulfilled by a healthy behavior (not smoking) rather than an unhealthy one (smoking).

“真相”运动是一个天才之举。他们采用了让青少年开始吸烟的相同营销战术，并扭转了剧本。如果一个青少年拒绝吸烟，并不意味着他们在听从成年人的指令，而是向世界表明他们是一个反叛和自主的人，值得拥有成人般的地位。通过拒绝香烟，他们可以反击不公正并保护弱者，加入数百名同龄人的合唱团，这些人认可他们。这场运动确保了通过健康行为（不吸烟）而不是不健康行为（吸烟）满足年轻人对归属、联系、地位和尊重的潜在需求。

Think about how “Truth” signals respect for young people in a way that “Think. Don’t smoke” doesn’t. The latter has an insulting implication that the problem is young people’s inability to think clearly. The “Truth” ads, by contrast, depicted young people as the only ones who could think clearly enough to fight back against the manipulation that the establishment failed to protect them from. Adults who stand on the sidelines are complicit in a horrifying scheme perpetrated by the tobacco companies, which kills thousands of Terries annually.

想想看“真相”如何向年轻人表达尊重，而“思考。不要吸烟”做不到。后者有一个侮辱性的暗示，即问题是年轻人无法清晰地思考。相比之下，“真相”广告则描绘只有年轻人才能够清晰地思考，并反击未能保护他们免受操纵的机构。站在场边的成人是共谋者，参与烟草公司实施的可怕阴谋，每年杀死数千名特丽。

When researchers evaluated the national “Truth” campaign, they found striking results. Wherever the ads played, teenagers’ desires to try or continue smoking declined. Crucially, the campaign made young people think that smoking wasn’t cool—the only approach to have ever done so. These attitude changes translated into better public health outcomes. Starting with the launch of the “Truth” campaign, teen smoking rates declined every year, from about 28 percent to under 6 percent. Teen smoking was almost eliminated as a public health problem. To this day, public health experts consider the “Truth” campaign to be (along with seat belt ads in the 1970s) one of the two most successful public health efforts in U.S. history.

当研究人员评估全国性的“真相”运动时，他们发现了惊人的结果。无论广告在哪里播放，青少年尝试或继续吸烟的欲望都会下降。至关重要的是，这场运动让年轻人认为吸烟不酷——这是唯一做到这一点的策略。这些态度变化转化为更好的公共卫生结果。从“真相”运动启动开始，青少年吸烟率每年都在下降，从大约28%降至6%以下。作为一个公共卫生问题，青少年吸烟几乎被消除。直到今天，公共卫生专家认为“真相”运动是美国历史上最成功的两项公共卫生努力之一（另一个是1970年代的汽车安全带广告）。

What lessons can we take from the story of the “Truth” campaign? It shows that young people can in fact make choices that are good for their long-term health if we give them a route to status and respect. “Young people are not idiots,” the current CEO of the “Truth” initiative told me. “They make decisions about what’s valuable to them, so it’s our job to make nonsmoking a valuable decision, on their terms.” Instead of trying to get young people to care less about status or respect and more about their long-term self-interest, we should spend more time figuring out how to present choices to them in a way that aligns with the social rewards they already value.

我们能从“真相”运动的故事中吸取什么教训？它表明，如果我们给年轻人一条通往地位和尊重的途径，年轻人实际上可以做出有利于他们长期健康的选择。“年轻人不是白痴，”现任“真相”倡议的CEO告诉我。“他们对自己认为有价值的东西做出决定，所以我们的工作是让不吸烟成为一个有价值的决定（根据他们的条款）”与其试图让年轻人不那么关心地位或尊重，而更关心他们的长期自我利益，我们不如花更多时间弄清楚如何向他们提供选择，以符合他们原本就重视社会奖励这一事实。

The “Truth” campaign raises the possibility that similar solutions could prove effective for other challenges that adults face with adolescents, perhaps even medication adherence. As parents, educators, and managers, we are perennially frustrated with young people who don’t keep themselves safe, do their homework, or take the initiative at work. But what if we could choose a different way? The answer to that question comes from a scientific revolution in the science of young people.

“真相”运动提出了一个可能性，即类似的解决方案可能对成年人面临的与青少年相关的其他挑战（甚至也许对药物依从性问题）也有效。作为父母、教育者和经理，我们经常对年轻人感到沮丧，因为他们不保护自己，不做作业，或在工作中不主动。但是，如果我们能选择一种不同的方式呢？这个问题的答案来自青少年科学的一场科学革命。