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In the folklore of the startup world, few figures loom larger than the teenager.
在创业界的传说中，没有谁像青少年这个群体那样令人关切。
Teenagers see the future, set trends and spend money, or compel parents to spend it for them.
他们能预见未来、引领潮流、花钱或迫使父母为他们花钱。
Their behavior has become an obsession for entrepreneurs.
企业家痴迷于他们的行为。
This would seem to bode well for Musical.ly, an app that is young in every sense of the word.
对应用程序妈妈咪呀(Musical.ly)来说，这似乎是个好兆头。
The Shanghai-based company founded in 2014 claims more than 100 million users, most of whom, the company says, are in the 13-20 age bracket.
从各种角度讲，它都是一个年轻的应用。这家上海公司创立于2014年，号称拥有逾1亿用户。该公司称，他们大多在13岁至20岁这个年龄段。
In August, the company teamed up with MTV for a promotion tied to the Video Music Awards.
今年8月，该公司与MTV合作，与音乐录影带大奖(Video Music Awards)捆绑推广。
What is striking about the app, though, is how many of its users appear to be even younger than that.
不过，这个应用引人注目的一点是它的很多用户似乎比它所宣称的还要年轻。
Musical.ly has not just found the coveted teenage audience — it may have gone lower.
妈妈咪呀不仅找到了这些令人艳羡的青少年观众，而且还可能找到了年龄更小的用户。
And it points to a growing tension between younger users, technology companies, and the norms and laws that regulate them both.
而且它展现出更年轻的用户、技术公司以及管控他们双方的规范与法规之间的紧张关系。
The app encourages a youthful audience in subtle and obvious ways.
该应用以巧妙、明显的方式鼓励年轻观众。
It lets users create short videos in which they can lip-sync, dance or goof around to popular songs, movie scenes and other audio sources, and then post the videos to an Instagram-style feed.
它让用户创作短视频，他们可以在里面跟着流行歌曲、电影画面或其他音频资源对口型演唱、跳舞或玩闹，然后把视频发布到一个类似Instagram的订阅源。
Its featured feed includes stars popular with young listeners, including Ariana Grande and Selena Gomez, as well as lesser-known talent and social media personalities who have crossed over from services like Vine.
它以年轻听众喜欢的巨星，比如爱莉安娜•格兰德(Ariana Grande)和塞琳娜•戈麦斯(Selena Gomez)，以及一些从Vine等网站转过来的不太出名的明星和网红发布的视频为号召。
And its tool for posting videos includes an entire category for songs from Disney films and TV shows.
其发布视频的工具包括从迪士尼电影歌曲到电视节目等各种分类。
The app does not collect or show the age of its users, but some of its top-ranked users, whose posts routinely collect millions of likes, called hearts, appear from their videos and profile photos to be in grade school.
该应用不收集或显示用户的年龄，不过从它的一些顶级用户（他们发布的视频通常能得到好几百万的心型赞）发布的视频和头像来看，他们都是小学生。
Until recently, the app had a feature that suggested users to follow based on their location.
直到前不久，该应用推出一项功能，建议用户根据自己的位置进行关注。
In New York, that feature revealed a list composed largely not just of teenagers, but of children.
在纽约，那项功能显示出大部分用户不仅有青少年，而且有儿童。
This is no question the youngest social network we’ve ever seen, said Gary Vaynerchuk, chief executive of VaynerMedia, an advertising agency that focuses on social media.
这无疑是我们见过的最年轻的社交网络，专攻社交媒体的广告公司VaynerMedia的首席执行官加里•维纳查克(Gary Vaynerchuk)说。
Vaynerchuk, who has helped clients produce campaigns for the platform, said he first spotted the app in the iTunes App Store charts, and through Musical.ly videos reposted to other services like Instagram.
维纳查克帮助客户为该平台制作广告。他说，他最初是通过iTunes的App Store列表以及转发到Instagram等网站上的妈妈咪呀视频注意到这个应用的。
I would say that Snapchat and Instagram, they skew a little bit young, he said.
我得说，Snapchat和Instagram的用户偏年轻，他说。
But with Musical.ly, you’re talking about first, second, third grade.
不过，妈妈咪呀的用户都是一年级、二年级、三年级的学生。
This puts Musical.ly in a strange position.
这将妈妈咪呀置于一个奇怪的位置。
Websites and online service operators that target users under 13 must meet federal requirements regarding the collection and sharing of personal information, which is defined broadly to include names, photos or videos, or persistent identifiers, such as usernames.
以13岁以下的儿童为目标用户的网站或在线服务运营商必须满足联邦政府关于收集和分享个人信息的要求，包括名字、照片、视频或长期身份，比如用户名。
The restrictions are part of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule, often called COPPA, enacted by the Federal Trade Commission.
这些限制是联邦贸易委员会(Federal Trade Commission)制订的儿童网络隐私保护规定（Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule，通常被称为COPPA）的一部分。
Services that are more openly marketed toward children often stringently adhere to COPPA’s privacy rules.
更公开地向儿童进行推广的服务商往往会严格遵守COPPA的隐私规定。
Vine Kids, for example, is a limited and largely passive service with no usernames or video posting capabilities; similarly, YouTube Kids is essentially an app full of streaming children’s programming, walled off from the rest of YouTube’s ecosystem.
比如，Vine Kids是一个有限的、很大程度上非常被动的应用，它没有用户名或视频发布功能。同样，YouTube Kids本质上是一个儿童节目在线播放平台，与YouTube生态系统的其他部分隔开。
In contrast, Musical.ly, like Snapchat or Instagram, is a full-functioning social network, popular with young people but not openly marketed to them.
相比之下，妈妈咪呀和Snapchat或Instagram一样，是一个功能齐全的社交网络，在年轻人中很受欢迎，不过不是公开向他们推广。
Such discussions about privacy can feel strained against the backdrop of technological change.
这些关于隐私的讨论在技术变革的背景下显得有些勉强。
The first version of COPPA became law in 1998, almost a decade before the iPhone was introduced.
COPPA的第一版是1998年通过立法的，那几乎是在iPhone推出10年前。
Last year, the research firm Influence Central said that, on average, parents who give their children smartphones do so at age 12.
去年，调查公司Influence Central称，平均来讲，父母在孩子12岁时给他们智能手机。
And once they have a phone, they get apps.
孩子们一旦拥有手机，就开始接触应用。
In a study of the law published in 2011 by the academic journal First Monday, researchers suggested that COPPA created intractable issues.
在学术期刊《First Monday》2011年发布的一项关于该法律的研究中，研究者认为，COPPA制造了一些棘手的问题。
To remain compliant, tech companies either cut off young users or claimed ignorance of their presence, while parents, for whom the law is meant to provide guidance and comfort, often ended up helping their children circumvent sign-up rules.
为了遵守法律，技术公司要么不让年轻用户使用，要么佯装这些用户不存在，而父母们虽然认为这项法律是为了提供指导，让人安心，结果却往往是帮助孩子们绕过注册规定。
Increasing the current style of enforcement, the report concluded, would only encourage firms to focus on denying access rather than providing privacy protection or cooperating with parents.
这份报告认为，强化目前的执法形式只会鼓励公司把注意力放在拒绝访问上，而不是提供隐私保护或与父母配合上。
In short, children are using their smartphones much like the rest of us, whether or not they are comprehensively addressed by regulations or by broader cultural conventions.
简而言之，儿童使用智能手机的方式和我们其他这些人很像，不管他们总体来讲是否受到法规或更广泛的文化传统的关注。
Alex Hofmann, president of Musical.ly, said the company tries to be mindful of its popularity with younger users.
妈妈咪呀的总裁亚历克斯•霍夫曼(Alex Hofmann)说，该公司努力关注它在更年轻用户中的流行。
One of the differences to other apps, he said, is that we don’t only talk to the musers — the company’s term for users — we talk to the parents.
我们与其他应用的一个不同之处在于，他说，我们不仅与muser（该公司对用户的称呼）交流，还与他们的父母交流。
He keeps close counsel with a network of a few dozen top users, and some of their families, and frequently asks for feedback from both regarding everything from user safety to new features. (The company’s support page contains an entire section directed toward parents — one that notes the app is intended for 13-plus only.)
他与几十名顶级用户和其中部分人的家庭保持密切联系，经常征求从用户安全到新功能是否好用的各种意见（该公司的支持页面有一部分内容完全是写给父母的，点明该应用仅面向13岁以上的用户）。
Ultimately, Hofmann said, he expects the app to diversify its audience.
霍夫曼说，他期望该应用最终能让自己的用户更多样化。
We really see ourselves as a real social network, and as a network for different age groups, he said.
我们真的认为自己是一个真正的社交网络，面向不同的年龄层，他说。
For now, the company will have to navigate a peculiar if widely envied situation — capitalizing on its apparent popularity with an audience that it cannot fully acknowledge, watched over by wary but increasingly complicit parents.
目前，该公司将不得不在一个独特而广受艳羡的境况中前行——利用一个它不能完全承认的用户群对它的明显青睐，而这群用户受到警惕而又越来越串通一气的父母的监视。
A year ago, there was basically nobody who was 40 years old on Snapchat, Vaynerchuk said. If Musical.ly can hold on, they will age up.
一年前，Snapchat上几乎没有40岁以上的人，维纳查克说，如果妈妈咪呀能坚持下去，用户们也会慢慢长大。
