It's been a quiet old summer in our house.

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We've done all the things we'd planned to do that didn't involve phones - coast trips, beach days, pool swims, families and cousins, mall hangs, galleries, movies and general summer attractions.

But my teenager's social life seems to have died right down, and while I could be worried, I'm wondering whether that's a good thing.

Talking to a friend with a daughter the same age last week, we mused that both our teenagers had experienced heightened "friend drama" just a few weeks before the social media ban came into place. The timing of them and all their friends being booted off the apps was coming at exactly the right time.

Now their social lives are muted by circumstance, and they both seem happy with their own company for the moment.

We got to talking about my younger daughter, who's 10. No phone for her, and when she does get one, there'll be no apps.

"It will be a clean slate," I told my friend.

"I think that was always the idea - too late for our older girls," he said.

He's right. The 13-year-olds are already battle-scarred, and perhaps reeling from being so abruptly yanked away from a world they had been so comfortable inhabiting. Their brains have been softened by brain rot - the kind brought on by endless scrolling of mindless, awful dross.

So, a brave new world for our little ladies.

Except that it turns out mine hasn't actually been kicked off the apps. After initially seeing her account shut down, she, along with many others, simply opened another account with a fake age, one she still has.

I didn't object at the time, mainly because I was curious to see what happened, and besides, it seems to have been only to make a point. There's not much going on in app-land, and the novelty of stickin' it to the man (in this........

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