Kids these days: The very real phoney war
Sunday, 29 March 2026
Mike White is a senior writer and columnist.
OPINION: The day was glorious, the sun high, and the wind had blown itself out.
Pretty much everyone you talk to rates this summer as one from the bottom drawer, a fickle and disappointing one, with gorgeous days fleeting, and temperatures nowhere near what is expected.
Orchardists bemoan late-ripening fruit, vineyard owners wait impatiently for brix levels to rise, and we stare at our tomatoes and wonder how many more will ripen before autumn overwhelms us.
But today was a pearler, an unimpeachable gem.
Read more by Mike White:
Before lunch, I figured there was just enough time for a quick bike ride to the river.
The trip there is a joy of downhill twists and freewheeling fun before the river opens up in front of you, blue and boiling.
I dropped my bike on the grass, watched the sticks circling giddily in the eddies, and then girded myself for the hills on the way back.
Coasting along a rare flat stretch, I passed two people coming the other way, one with a pack that looked like they were off for an alpine expedition rather than a stroll to the river.
They had stopped, and were studying a phone, as if trying to work out where they were. Probably they were just preparing heroic photos for an Instagram post.
About 50m further on, I spied a sullen 12-year-old walking slowly along the trail, her head down, eyes fixed on her phone, the world beyond this bubble being of absolutely no merit or interest. She looked miserable.
Another 20m behind her was a sullen 10-year-old, his face, likewise, a few inches from his phone.
I slowed and veered to the side.
He shuffled on like a convict on a chain gang, and peered at his screen.
“Morning,” I chirruped politely, alerting him to my presence.
He glanced up and looked as if he’d been startled by a daytime werewolf.
But in a Tik Tok instant, his alarm passed, and he was back staring at his phone, wishing he was anywhere else other than being dragged along a stupid track, on a stupid walk to a stupid river, by his stupid parents.
Experiencing nature seemed like the equivalent of a death march to the kids, with their phones providing the only fragile link with life as they knew it. Without data, goodness knows just how pear-shaped the morning outing might have gone.
The difficult and often impossible debate about kids and phones is one I’d never wade into, but was laid bare in a landmark court judgment this week.
What do I know about technology’s seductions?
And what does anyone know about kids? I mean, we’ve all been one, but can anyone really explain what it was all about?
I’m just stupidly grateful not to be growing up now, in an age of social media, and ever-present phones meaning we can never truly escape the world of bullies and badness.
When I was at college, there were bullies aplenty.
The most feared was a guy who was so scary, we’d dread wet days when PE classes were shifted to the gym and he’d beat the shit out of anyone he could collar without being spotted.
By the time we made it to seventh form/Year 13, he was in prison for manslaughter, having baseball batted a woman at a party he’d been tossed out of.
Two other bullies I remember were your run-of-the mill shitheads who were simply mean populists.
They both became cops, funnily enough.
One of them used to throw kids’ bikes into a ditch and then piss on them when they went to retrieve them.
I looked him up a few years back to see whether he was still a cop, but he’d died. Everyone said he was such a tremendous guy, the life and soul of any party, a man happiest with a chilly bin of freshly-caught fish and a cold beer.
He must have changed.
But at least when I went home, you could escape these types, their crowing clutches, and baying minions. Now, that’s barely possible, phones providing a constant conduit for the hateful and hurtful.
Back on the trail, past the unhappy family all on their phones, I reached the top of the last wee hill, and spotted a walker coming up towards me.
I stopped, and he looked up and stepped off the track into the shade of a mānuka tree.
“You come on up,” I said.
“No, you go first,” he replied, “I was looking for an excuse to have a break.”
He had a wiry grey beard, dark glasses, and a kind smile.
He was probably about 80.
“I forgot my hill stick,” he said, explaining why he wasn’t vaulting up the slope.
“He looked up again, at the blue of the sky and the gold of the turning poplars and the scarlet of the rosehips.
“Beautiful day, isn’t it,” he said.