Now kids are off social media, the neighbourhood’s filling with treehouses

This morning on my way to work, I was hit with a frisbee. It’s those damn neighbourhood kids, riding around with baseball cards in the spokes of their BMX wheels to make them sound like motorbikes, rolling hula-hoops into the traffic, TPing old man Johnston’s house.

Things have gotten out of control since we stopped pacifying our teenagers with screens to stare into and feeds to scroll. The national social media ban for under 16s only came into effect this morning, and already the pile of lumber down the side of my house has been stolen and refashioned into a neighbourhood treehouse, which is doubling as a pirate ship in some pesky kids’ imagination-filled utopia. Soccer balls keep landing in my garden, and some little brat has tied my hose into a reef knot.

There are marble holes dug all through the local park, and I couldn’t even cross the grass without tripping over teenagers lazing around on picnic blankets, shamelessly enjoying feasts of stewed apples and lashings of jam. Garbage bins have been moved from the BBQ area to act as cricket wickets, and there are young ruffians sliding down the grassy hill on flattened Kennards boxes, squealing with glee as I attempt to make a business call.