On one of my recent wanderings through this tangled sparkling web of morning beauty, lies, damned lies and Facebook reels, I came across something on my path that confounded me.
It was a pile of wet dirt shored up with an old tyre, and threaded with broken bricks and a large, gnarled stick.
At first, I thought it might be another example of bush trashing by lazy dumpsters defying council tip fees.
But looking closer I saw the sandy pile had thin tyre marks through it and sat at the end of a separate, cleared path.
It was clearly a purpose-built bike jump.
But it was more than that.
This crude bike jump on a bush path was an Acropolis of human achievement in the face of the deadly hypnotic grip of screens.
It was the sign of a physical childhood spent outdoors in defiance of the pernicious algorithms sent to devour them like Saturn eating his sons to preserve his power.
It said: Pow.
Take that Mr Zuckerberg and all you tech bros trying to steal my childhood. Thwack! Eat dirt Mr Tate and all you manosphere dudes wanting my ingenuity and strength to be enslaved in the service of your warped view of the world.
Me and my mates are going to build a crazy bike jump in the bush that is definitely not OH&S approved and has no guardrails or cameras attached.
I can hear all my boomer mates cheering loudly.
Finally, the kids are fighting back and returning to the halcyon days of mucking about on bikes in the bush, no adults within cooee and scuffed knees sported as badges of bravery.
Unfortunately it’s not that simple.
After a quarter of a century of investment and development, the gaming and tech industry is now a master at making profit through emotional manipulation.
The Australian government has enacted its own world-first ban on children under 16 accessing media platforms with big social networks like Facebook, Instagram and others.
But of course, determined kids have found a way around this and are still pushing buttons, swiping and staring at screens for dopamine hits.
But the government move does at least send a signal that too much screen life is a bad thing for developing minds.
While debate still continues around the educational value of laptops and tablets in schools, some parents are pushing for a return to “pen-and-paper learning” in schools.
A change.org online petition for primary schools to be device free has collected more than 27,000 signatures.
Meanwhile, when Ben Carroll was Victorian education minister, he announced parents no longer need to buy a device for their children — the state will provide laptops and tablets for children to use at school.
So it seems supervised screentime can be good, but left to their own devices, kids are at the mercy of the tech bros.
The debate continues on a global scale in California where Meta is being sued by a coalition of US states accusing it of designing Instagram and Facebook to hook kids and harvest their data.
Meta is fighting back saying they introduced a Take a Break safety feature, but kids didn’t use it.
What a surprise.
So as the screen wars continue across the digital and legal worlds, in the real world, kids are still building bike jumps in the bush and putting two fingers up to the harvesters and influencers.
That should give us all some hope.
John Lewis is a former reporter at The News.
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