A few days into the school holidays and the online groups and gossip boards seem to be hotting up with commentary on the behaviour of local kids.

In fact not really stories – warnings.

There’s the ‘big group’ spotted heading for the corner shop, the teens in the toddler playground with a football and the one who burst into the road on his bike without looking and straight into the path of a car.

When I was nine, maybe 10, I remember riding out in front of a car and giving some poor driver a heart attack.

The screech of his wheels as he slammed on the brakes was enough to give me one too.

A dozen of us also used to tear daily through the network of back alleys near our homes, shouting and screaming in some game or another, with little thought for neighbours or whether our behaviour appeared menacing.

And on more than one occasion we’d thump a neighbour’s car with a football – in trying to get a direct hit on the opposite kerb. The ball would bounce, there’d be a thud, we’d freeze, then look around sheepishly to see if anyone noticed before carrying on.

But that’s as far as it went.

No one took our picture, put it on a leaflet with a critical sentence or two, and shoved it through the letter box of every home within a 12-mile radius. Which would be the equivalent 25 years ago of what happens today.

There was some illegal activity too. I was about 12 when a child I knew broke their leg falling through a garage roof.

The budding athletes among us also fancied our chances in the occasional lamp post climbing competition – where the worst thing to happen to you in street gymnastics was getting dog wee up your leg.

I’m not looking through that with rose tinted glasses. Riding out in front of a car – stupid. Hitting other people’s – wreckless and inconsiderate. Climbing lampposts? Probably prohibited.

But my point is, our play went unrecorded, we negotiated the vices that came our way, and we learnt naturally from our often daft mistakes without the judgement of 20,000 neighbours who had a window into our sometimes questionable choices.

The increasing surveillance of today’s young people isn't helpful. Not least because it’s fuelling a myth within society that every child over the age of eight is one step away from committing a crime or some form of anti-social behaviour and the younger generation is the one to be feared.

And while I’m sure some will say sharing photographs to online groups can round-up some young oik or another who’s caused some damage, damage is also steadily being done to the reputation of thousands of others in the process.

Being in a ‘big group’ isn’t necessarily a crime - but such warnings perpetuate fears that one is soon to be committed.

Teens taking their football into the toddler playground isn’t helpful – but does it warrant a message on a residents’ group? Did anyone politely ask the group to leave so the under fives could use the swings I wonder?

We’re quick to point out that young people today spend far too much time on their phones – turning them all into snowflakes.

But if we want them to step away from social media, as adults we must stop using it to tar them all with the same brush.