Episode 2 On Top of the Digital World

Jonathan Grubin is 18 and about to start university.

But first, he's got to make a few arrangements

to ensure his new online business, Live Newcastle, is running smoothly.

Live Newcastle is a project I set up

to help promote regional independent retail and leisure businesses.

So, shops, cafes, bars, restaurants, nightclubs.

What we do is we partner with all these organisations

to offer some sort of discount or benefit to our members.

For example, the cinema offers cheaper tickets.

10% off clothing, that sort of thing.

Jonathan needs 1,000 people to sign up to Live Newcastle via the website this year in order to break even.

But he's aiming to exceed that and get between 5,000 and 7,000 members on board.

Businesses pay us a small fee to get involved

but this gives them access to our network of members,

who they wouldn't otherwise be able to reach

and our members just pay £15 a year,

which entitles them to all of these discounts and deals that we have.

Live Newcastle isn't Jonathan's first company.

His online business ventures began at the age of 12.

He created a website allowing people to download screensavers and backgrounds

he designed for mobile phones.

I realised that if I wanted to get stuff for free for my computer and my phone,

chances were other people would as well. So, I set up a website where you could download it free.

I remember the first version of it was a bright green background,

big red text on. It didn't look good at all.

But it worked. People could come on there,

see my stuff and they could download it.

Well, I set the website up purely as a hobby.

I didn't realise there was any way I could make money out of it.

And I didn't really want to.

It was something I was doing for fun, because I enjoyed it.

But someone said to me,

"Look, you can make some money off your website."

I didn't really believe them.

I thought they were a bit crazy. How can you make money off the internet?

But after investigating,

Jonathan discovered that he could make more money

by allowing advertisers to market themselves

on sections of his website.

A few months later, I got a cheque through the door for £12.01.

I've still got the invoice and it was a fantastic feeling at the time,

earning a bit of pocket money online

when my friends are doing paper rounds or washing dishes.

It was good to be making money from something I enjoyed.

And that really gave me an eye for business.

In 2006, when Jonathan was 14,

he set about turning his online hobby into a business

by launching the ForFree4u network.

ForFree4u encouraged users of the website to get

their friends to sign up in order to receive free gifts.

Companies advertised on the website and paid Jonathan a commission.

The network went incredibly well. We had 70,000 members,

a network of 10 or 11 websites.

In the first full year of business, the sites turned over around £70,000.

They've now turned over more than £100,000.

Then he came up with the idea for Live Newcastle.

Live Newcastle has cost about £15,000 to develop and launch.

As well as contributing his personal profit from ForFree4u,

Jonathan has also managed to secure funding from Business Link.

This means he's been able to hire a professional web team

to design his website.

One of their biggest challenges

-is how to get new members to sign up online.

-Now, what are you like with online networking?

We've got a few hundred followers on Twitter, which is proving quite good.

Great for getting businesses on board more than the consumer end.

We're looking to kick off the Facebook page soon.

-Brilliant.

-Hopefully, once we get that going, we can link that with the website.

-Yes.

-So we can feed through everything.

-OK, then. Fantastic...

Launching online businesses has proved to be a perfect platform for young entrepreneurs.

Obviously having a website,

you've got no overheads in terms of having to pay rent on a shop

or having to employ people to manage something for you 24-7.

A website effectively can automate and manage everything for you and so it's a lot less hassle

and, you know, obviously increases your profit margin as well.

And the internet offers access to free market research tools.

This is Google Analytics. We implemented this on the Live Newcastle website.

Basically it can monitor the traffic coming to your site.

If we want adverts on the website, we can show people who's coming to it, how they're getting there,

whether they're coming through search engines or if it's direct traffic

and how much time they spend on the website.

It means we get a lot of information which we don't spend money for.

Down in London, Jonathan's balancing his new life as a student

with the demands of running his online business.

Tonight, he's off to a networking event

to meet other entrepreneurs who might be good contacts for the future.

Obviously I use Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, which are all amazing.

But I started going along to events in person a year and a half ago

and they're fantastic.

Face-to-face contact is amazing.

Someone I know quite well from Newcastle,

Nick Bell, who runs Quick TV, is coming along tonight as well.

Nick made nearly £1 million from the sale of an online teenage magazine when he was just 16.

And he's carried on creating new online businesses.

It's interesting to look at the demographic

of young, successful entrepreneurs.

A lot of them are using the web as the first step into business

and then developing their ideas, so, the guys that started Facebook,

or in the UK, you look at Ally and Andy at Huddle,

the likes of Sam Barnett at Struq...

What do Nick and Jonathan think the advantages are of setting up a business online?

I think when you launch a business online,

it costs far less.

You also have the potential reach of a huge audience

to get your message to.

I think you can also hide the fact that you're a teen,

that you have no business experience.

When I launched my business and I'm sure it's the same, Jon, when you launched yours,

we didn't shout about the fact that we were still in our bedrooms.

-No-one actually knew that.

-No, exactly, yeah.

I launched with £300 that I'd saved up.

Bricks-and-mortar business, you'd need a lot more money than that,

but I was promoting some big, big names.

Without the internet that wouldn't have been possible at all.

Running a business is about having ideas, enthusiasm

and getting people to buy into what you're doing.

I would say if you've got an idea, go ahead and try it.

Especially if you're young, you're in school.

There's no harm in trying out your idea. If it doesn't work,

at least you've tried, you haven't failed.

You know what you're good at, what you might not be good at.

You can take something away from that.

I've been on the internet and I've found a nice bit from Wikipedia

which I'm going to use as my introduction.

It talks about how Caesar isn't the main character, although the play is named after him.

Clare is in Year Ten and is writing an essay on Julius Caesar.

As usual, she's using the web for research.

We've asked her to plagiarise sections from the internet and put them into her essay.

Plagiarism occurs when a student takes material from a source

and doesn't acknowledge it in their work,

for example, taking material directly from the internet

and then not providing a reference as to the website

and to the actual name of the author whose material they used.

So, it's OK to take material and use it in your work

as long as you give proper acknowledgement and give that work credit.

Playing a huge role in the battle to stamp out plagiarism

are sophisticated plagiarism detector programs.

Nearly all universities in the UK have this software

and more and more schools are now using it.

I went on Google and I typed in "Julius Caesar" and "Brutus"

and just saw what results came up.

I'm on a site called SparkNotes

and I've found a bit which describes Brutus as a person

and I'm going to copy and paste that into my essay.

I'm on The Literature Network and I'd never heard of it before,

it just came up when I typed in for my search.

It should have some interesting stuff.

A recent study indicates that 80% of US college students

admit to copying directly from websites for their essays.

Teachers and lecturers across the world

are concerned about this worrying trend.

In the case of serious plagiarism, they could actually get zero,

which could eventually mean failing a module

and actually failing the course.

We have had serious action had to be taken on a few occasions.

There was one occasion where an assessment was submitted.

It was a direct copy of another student's work.

The original student was unaware of that.

I think the internet has added to the problem

because of the cut-and-paste ability.

It's pretty easy to plagiarise

cos it's just really clicking buttons,

copying, pasting. Very basic.

I've now finished the essay.

I've got 10 plagiarised pieces.

In some sources, I've changed some words and swapped some round.

I'm not sure if the software will get it.

Clare's off to meet Will Murray at plagiarismadvice.org,

which distributes the software, to find out how effective it is.

OK, Clare. We've received your essay

and we've loaded it in to turn it in, which took about five minutes

and it's carrying out a comparison with its database.

Let's go through each of the matches and have a look at where they've come from.

In this match here, it's showing that it's come from Wikipedia as the source.

Yeah, that is right, yeah.

And if we go into that and ask it to show us in context...

So, now we can see the Wikipedia page here

that that content came from.

And on the left hand side, we can see the original essay.

And the software has even identified

the sections where Clare swapped the plagiarised paragraphs around.

Here's a section that's been identified as coming from SparkNotes

and we can see on the left-hand side here in the original essay,

it looks like they've been re-ordered.

Because the second paragraph here has been moved to the bottom

and the bottom one's been moved into the middle.

-Is that what you did?

-Yeah. I swapped the sentences round.

The matching algorithm still works because it's looking for patterns.

Even though some of the words have been changed, it identifies it.

All essays submitted to Turnitin are saved.

So, if someone has copied another student's essay,

wherever they are in the country, this would also be detected.

What is acceptable is to use material from the internet as long as it's properly referenced.

What exactly is a reference?

A reference is a way of indicating to the reader

where you got the material from,

so that they can find it themselves.

Things you might have in a reference,

say from some content from a website,

are the original author, the date of the publication,

the title of the work and, with an internet site,

the site address and the date that you accessed it,

because obviously material on the internet changes regularly.

That enables somebody reading it to find that original source so they know where the ideas have come from

and you're giving acknowledgement to that original author.

Despite Clare's attempts to catch the software out,

every single instance of plagiarism in her essay has been detected.

The software was really effective.

It picked up even the stuff that I'd swapped around.

It picked up loads from all different sources.

I would never plagiarise but now I know that I wouldn't get away with it,

it's definitely put me off.

Twelve years ago, two brothers developed their first free online game.

Now aged 22 and 24, they've set up their own gaming website,

JohnnyTwoShoes.

They're on to their 17th game

and are getting a million new players a month.

How do they do it?

Banana Dash started out being a simple platformer game.

Like Mario, you collect coins.

Banana Dash, you collect bananas.

But the difference was, instead of adding to a score,

which was then your final score in the game,

it was about getting the best time

and every banana you collected would shave a second off the time.

We have traditional action games, which is for a certain audience

and then we have laid-back puzzle games as well.

They all have our style to them,

but they are very varied, cos we like to explore ideas.

We kind of think about, "What would be fun?"

-If you're playing this, what would be fun?

-We come up with a new mechanic,

say a ball or a cart or something like that

and then we try and think of what will be interacting with that.

Like, what world would it be in? Will it be on a motorway?

Will it be underwater? Will it be in the sky?

Will it be somewhere new?

When we've got the graphic style down,

we move onto the objective of the game.

Usually, the last thing we do is sound. We think, "Oh, we need to have some sound effects!"

In some games, we've forgotten to do half of the sounds.

We're like, "Nothing happens when you collect a banana!"

So, we have to go look for a "ding" noise

that will find a sound which sounds good.

FANFARE

When you're delivering something for free,

it's almost more difficult to engage a player

because they'll want instant fun.

If you can give them that within the first, like...

even 10, 20 seconds, then they'll play the next levels.

If you cannot, then you've lost the player.

That's what's different from, say, big title console games.

They've made an investment. They've paid £50 or whatever to play that game.

They're going to spend hours on it.

Whereas an internet game, you've paid nothing,

so you've got to make people interested.

We get around a million people a month come to our website.

They publicise our games.

We don't necessarily do it, they do it, which is good,

cos they get more people on our website for them to talk to and play against.

It's more honest. If you get people who are already on your website, promoting your content...

We don't pay them, they do it because they love JohnnyTwoShoes. It's more effective.

I think we're biggest in Norway.

-Outside of America, though.

-Yeah.

No, I mean, we're in the top few thousand websites in Norway.

We're one of the most visited websites. It's quite strange.

Oslo is like red hot. It's quite interesting.

All you really need to make a game is a computer.

It can be any level of computer, really.

To start out, you're going to be making simple things anyway.

Essentially, to have that ability to design on the timeline for animation and stuff,

Flash is really essential. And that is about 300 quid on its own.

And obviously, if you're making games for the commercial market,

then that's nothing, really.

You start off a cheap tablet,

so you can draw like a pen to paper or a pad.

And that's really reasonable.

You can start about, how much?

I think you can get a basic tablet for about 60 quid.

A lot of people ask us how we make our money

because we don't actually charge to play the games on the website.

On their own, they kind of act as a portfolio for what we can do.

People see the work we've done and they hire us based on that.

They pay for themselves, even if it's not a traditional direct route.

We try and keep the experience of playing our games

as much about the games as possible.

We don't want to exploit that

and ruin it in the process,

by having over-the-top adverts.

We try and find alternative methods to make money.

I mean, we've just launched a game on the mobile device.

Essentially, what happens is, if for example, a million people buy that,

which isn't outlandish,

that is 700,000 of revenue that comes to us.

If you want to develop games,

I guess the best thing to do is really just enjoy playing games

and enjoy thinking about new ideas.

There is so much resource on the internet.

You can look into what you want to do,

then look how you can technically achieve it.

People will tell you, "You probably can't."

That's probably going to come up a lot.

People have always said we can't do things and then we do it.

It's actually a good motivator.

The great thing about making games is they're not really strictly defined.

They can be an experience which is interactive

and that experience is made up of so many different elements.

Be it art, animation, design, music,

programming, technical knowledge or creativity.

There's so much you can do.

Don't get disheartened that things aren't good straight away.

You're not going to be the next big game developer straight away.

You have to plug away until you get something that is good.

And, you know, sometimes that can take years.

You have to keep going at it.

If you really love it, then just keep going.

There's such a sense of achievement, doing your own thing.

It's really worthwhile.

Even though it's difficult,

it's definitely worth it to make something new and be creative.

When the top of the road was all bombed, it was a Sunday lunchtime.

I can remember that quite clearly.

My aunt had had nappies out on the line

and she'd done some roast potatoes for her dinner

and the glass all came through the window and was all in the dinner.

And the nappies were absolutely full of holes with the shrapnel.

And we were in the shelter, which was, what...

under 100 yards away, when this...

Meg is 78 years old.

Today, she's going to have her memories of the Second World War

recorded for the Heritage Plus website, run by the WRVS.

The website has allowed those stories

that would normally be untold and forgotten

and not passed on any further,

for people around the world to access.

Somebody from Eastbourne can tell a story and somebody in New Zealand can read it.

I mean, it's incredible.

Julius, a trained volunteer, is interviewing Meg.

We had a lot of bombing in this area, really.

Can you remember anything about that?

We used to spend a lot of time in that shelter.

And because we didn't have much room,

we used to have neighbours in there as well,

we used to have to sit up on stools all the way round it.

And we made a leaner-on-er!

That's we used to call it!

Which was a pole with a block of wood on the top and a cushion on the top,

so you could lean on it and go to sleep!

THEY LAUGH

Then, the audio recordings and scanned images

are uploaded to the website.

How much have you got altogether of the...?

-I've probably got about three-quarters of an hour.

-OK.

With all the material, we don't need to put it all on one page.

We could do two separate pages.

When we are happy with the page,

all laid out with all the information that need,

we simply publish it.

The moment of publishing the page, it goes live on the internet.

The Imperial War Museum has a major project underway

to create a digital archive of its collection.

Our collections are enormous

and they hold a range of material,

so we have the guns and the uniforms and the medals and the awards.

An enormous collection of 20th-century British art,

tens of thousands of hours of film and of sound.

Millions of photographs.

Documents, books, posters.

The collection is huge.

The museum's collections are so enormous,

they don't have enough space to put every item on display.

There are all the people who want to see our material

but can't get here.

We want to make our collections as widely-known as possible.

We've invested millions of pounds and so we are cataloguing,

we are digitising,

we are publishing these things onto our website.

We have teams who are dedicated to doing the digital work.

So if it's photographing material,

or if it's transferring it from video and film onto digital media.

We also have a dedicated team of people who are doing the cataloguing.

Maeve is an assistant curator at the museum.

Today, she's cataloguing a Second World War soldier's water flask

that was recently donated.

We need to describe the material.

You can see it's enamelled metal.

So, on this tag, it says,

"A POW's best friend."

A POW is a prisoner of war.

So...

I will type the inscription on that label into the records.

There's interesting differences between putting something on display

in a physical museum and putting it on to the internet.

For one thing, you can get a whole group of things together on the page of a website

that you couldn't possibly get together in a room at the same time,

because a film needs one sort of light level and a painting another.

And they just can't exist in the same space comfortably.

You can bring into it paintings that are so big, it takes six or eight people to move them.

But on the internet, you know, it's very, very simple to do that.

With so much precious historical information now available on the internet,

the question is, is anyone archiving the internet itself?

The answer is yes,

at the Internet Archive in California.

It's actually a shipping container, about 20ft by 8ft by 8ft long.

It is currently the case that about four petabytes of compressed data

can live in that amount of space.

Two petabytes is roughly 150 billion snapshots of web page content.

Websites are preserved using software called a web crawler.

And what the software does is collect the materials presented by the website.

The challenge is that private networks are not accessible,

unless you have the permission of an individual user within that network.

Anyone can access the archive's website by what's called the Wayback Machine.

Type in a web address,

you pull up a series of dates.

You select the date that's of interest to you

and you can begin browsing the web from that point in time, forward or backwards.

The Wayback Machine currently receives over 500 requests per second.

That roughly equates to tens of millions of requests in the course of a day.

If the Internet Archive does not preserve this content, it will be lost.

And traditional archives are changing their attitude

to the kind of material they should be collecting and preserving.

We've just launched a project

which is asking people who are serving in the armed forces in Afghanistan

to send their texts and their blogs and their digital photographs

and their e-mails and their Facebook content

to us, so we can preserve digital content.

It's hugely important that we start capturing that material because,

for most people, it's a text and it just gets discarded.

And so we want to create it, so that in 50 years' time, 100 years' time,

people will be able to look at those records

and try and re-imagine what it was like

to be living in Britain in the year 2009,

or serving in Afghanistan in the year 2009.

It's six in the morning,

and 13-year-old Louis and his mum are off to a car-boot sale.

They're not just looking to buy things for themselves.

If I see something I like,

then I'll buy it and go back home

and put it on eBay and see what I get for it.

Hoping to make a bit of money.

I'm looking for clothes, games, china, ornaments, whatever, really.

Louis is one of a growing number of teenagers making money

by selling items via online auction sites.

How much for the little jug?

-They're both £1.50 together.

-Yeah.

I just bought these two pieces of Royal Albert. Both for £1.50.

I'm just going to look on my phone and see how much they're going for on eBay.

I'm just seeing if I can see one like mine.

And there's a few of my pattern, but none like mine.

But it's going quite well, from about £8 - £20.

So, basically, I bought these two Royal Albert jugs

with the Blossom Time pattern,

which is quite good.

I also like the little cat,

cos a lot of people collect cats and it should go quite well.

And I got Caterpillar boots which are quite expensive new,

so should go well second hand.

My favourite thing is probably the kettle.

It's quite collectible and it's quite expensive new.

Louis has spent £18 in total on his items.

And now the preparation to sell them begins.

We're taking pictures of our items, so people can see what they are.

Cos, unlike a boot sale,

where you can touch it and make sure it's what you want

or it's genuine, you can't do that online.

Most online marketplaces only allow people over 18 to have an account.

So, Louis sells his items with the help of his mum.

This is my account. Louis is underage

and he can't have an account in his own name.

If there's anything he wants to list, he uses my account, with my permission.

So, would you say orange or red?

Well, let's start with the make.

Just going to put Le Creuset kettle.

If you put the size, it helps as well, doesn't it? 1.6 litres.

All buyers and sellers using online marketplaces

are encouraged to leave feedback and ratings,

which indicate how trustworthy the person they've dealt with is.

You can check on a seller's feedback and it gives you confidence

that they're a trustworthy person

and they have described their item accurately.

For us, it's important that people comment

that the items we send are well packed,

because we send a lot of breakable items.

A comment is also a good way

because a comment can be more precise than just a numerical figure.

Tony Neate is the managing director of Get Safe Online,

an organisation which offers advice to internet users.

Feedback's useful when it comes to shops.

There are a number of sites

that you can get a review of the shop you're buying from.

Are they reliable? How quick are they in delivering?

If there's a problem, how quick are they to respond?

Leaving feedback is important, positive or negative.

Most of the items Louis sells

are paid for via an online payment system.

But how secure is this?

Gareth Griffith is the head of risk management at PayPal UK.

It is very safe with PayPal.

It's behind the equivalent of big thick locked doors

and no-one can access it.

I can't even get to that data.

It's all encrypted in technical code

that no-one would be able to understand anyway.

Buyer and seller don't see each other's details.

We give the minimum amount required - your e-mail address, your shipping address,

so that the seller can ship it. But nothing more.

Every transaction that goes through PayPal is checked by a machine.

If there's something suspicious, they are manually checked.

Someone who has been trained in investigating these kinds of things

will look at each transaction and make a decision one way or the other.

If we find something that's definitely fraudulent, we alert the buyer,

and we take action against the seller.

If it's criminal, if it's something particularly bad,

we'll get in touch with the police.

Despite the protection offered by online payment systems,

things can go wrong if the correct procedures aren't followed,

as Harriet found out.

When I was 15, I was looking on eBay and I saw this second-hand laptop,

and I thought, "I don't mind if it's got a few chips, doesn't bother me."

After about a week, after the bidding ended, I'd won this laptop for £112.

I was working in a Chinese for about £3 an hour,

so £112 was a lot of money then, to me anyway.

I basically bought it, put it through PayPal.

Eventually, the laptop didn't come and I thought,

give it a week or two, see what actually happens. Nothing arrived.

Harriet opened a dispute with PayPal.

This alerts the organisation to potentially fraudulent transactions.

However, she was then finally contacted by the seller,

assuring her that the laptop was on its way.

I e-mailed him, he e-mailed back with a phone number and a tracking number for the Post Office.

So, she closed her dispute.

The telephone line was dead, the tracking number didn't exist at all.

By this time, I knew it was a complete and utter scam

and I didn't know what to do from there.

I'd already opened and closed the dispute, naively, which meant that I didn't get any money whatsoever.

In the case of Harriet, my advice to her would be the same as to anyone else.

Until you're holding the item that you've bought in your hand and it looks like what you meant to buy,

then you shouldn't consider the transaction complete or that you're happy with the transaction.

And Tony Neate's advice?

Make sure you speak to your parents about the site you're using.

Make sure it's a website that we all know about.

If you don't know about it, do some research.

Check out the shop that you're using.

Make sure that other people haven't had bad experiences. They might show a picture of something new,

where actually they're selling you something four or five years old.

So, always be cautious.

If something looks too good to be true, it probably is.

It's been a week since Louis listed his items on eBay and the auctions are coming to an end.

It's gone up to £17 now.

Our cat trinket box went for £5.19

and I only paid 50p, so I have ten times my money.

People do like to put a last-second bid on, sneak a bargain.

This seagull sold for £2.99.

I only paid 50p. The kettle sold for £17.01, making me £14 profit.

So, now all his auctions are over, how did Louis do?

The total I made from the items was £35.69.

Minus the £18 I spent, I've got a profit of £17.69.

Not bad for a day's work!

Leo was, as a young child, very, very outgoing and joking around,

having a great time.

But when he went to secondary school, things changed.

I started playing computer games when I was about seven.

I normally play, like, action, adventure games.

I moved onto playing games on the computer and online,

instead of just playing console games.

We...

We noticed a change in him.

Every evening, after he'd done his homework,

he sat down at the computer to play games.

He became more withdrawn and spent even more time on the computer.

And when people came to visit, relatives or friends,

he wouldn't go and socialise with people.

When the games got serious,

I would play anything from 12 to 14 hours a day.

Leo didn't think he had a problem.

No problem whatsoever.

"What's the problem?" You know.

But Leo did have a problem.

Aged 16, he ended up in a clinic in Amsterdam,

being treated for gaming addiction.

Keith Bakker runs the Smith and Jones Clinic,

which helps people with different addictions,

including compulsive gaming.

It's my opinion that there's nothing wrong with video games.

Video games are not a problem. It's the same thing with handguns.

Guns don't kill people,

people kill people.

There's a lot of positive things about video games.

The bad news is,

that there are a group of people that are going to be...

Um, they're going to get caught in a trap.

He lost a lot of weight, his hair grew long, his nails grew long.

He didn't look after himself.

His hygiene suffered.

I wouldn't really bother to make my own meals.

My mum or my sister would bring me in some food.

I used to eat it at the computer.

The only way to get him to eat was to actually take the food to him.

And even then he wouldn't eat everything on his plate.

He was too busy talking and playing on the computer.

The bulk of the people we get and I would even say almost virtually 100%

are people that are playing multi-player games.

And these are online community-based video games.

So you get the game that is actually quite exhilarating while you play,

coupled with an entire community of millions of other kids around the world who are playing.

The combination of those two things,

that's like a recipe for a stick of dynamite.

Leo is by no means a violent child at all.

But when we took the modem away, he did posture,

this is the word I'd use, with a pair of scissors.

The gamers have, um...

very interesting symptoms.

They quite often can't sleep.

Their daily schedules normally have no structure.

Their self-esteem is based on virtual reality.

Virtual means "not".

Once they turn that game off, who are they?

I was quite shy. I did find it difficult to make friends.

And so I'd say going home and playing on the computer games online,

with friends that I'd made over the internet,

was kind of like having my social life.

My lowest point, when I was 15, I dropped out of school.

I didn't feel like I could face it,

getting up in the morning and going back in again.

And so I started playing games non-stop.

Leo became agoraphobic.

He wouldn't go out of the house at all, not even out into the garden.

It was a very worrying time, extremely worrying as a parent,

not knowing how to deal with it

because it's something that's not really out there.

After years of trying to deal with Leo's addiction,

finally Jenny heard about Keith and his clinic.

I heard a news clip about this clinic in Amsterdam

that was treating young people with gaming addiction.

So I wrote an e-mail to Keith.

He answered my e-mail and said, could we meet up in London with Leo?

We managed to persuade Leo to go to see Keith

and he was with him for well over an hour in a hotel.

He said, "You and your daughter go and have a cup of coffee, leave Leo with me.

"By the time you come back, he's going to be coming to Amsterdam."

I was in the centre for five weeks.

I had one-to-one counselling sessions as well as group sessions.

We had group bonding exercises where we just went out and had fun,

just to really re-socialise and be involved in a team.

We developed a programme where we look at the empty place

that is created when the video game is taken out.

And that empty place is all about life skills.

It's all about health and nutrition, work and career, free time,

hobbies, relationships, finance, all the...

What are you going to do to begin to get a life that you enjoy so much,

that you're not going to find it necessary to play video games any more? That's the trick.

Leo pays a yearly visit to the clinic in Amsterdam,

to take part in group sessions

and to help others suffering from gaming addiction.

What's the difference between a video gamer and a drug addict?

The substance. That's about it.

So, Teddy, you've got some issues with drugs.

-Yeah.

-And at the end of the day,

can you tell us, what were the negative consequences of your drug addiction?

-Er, the isolation.

-Isolation.

Hang on, Leo, you're a gamer.

What were the negative consequences of your gaming?

-Isolation.

-Isolation.

Tell us about what the last days of your gaming looked like.

Mmm.

It was sad, I was depressed, lonely, bored of playing games.

I thought that I didn't have a future in front of me.

-I thought my life was pretty much over.

-It's the same insanity, the same obsession.

-Incredible, isn't it?

-Yeah, it's incredible. First thing I thought,

yeah, addiction gaming - come on!

But it's... Really, it's the same symptoms, it's the same.

Your life became unmanageable.

It was no fun any more.

It was crisis. The same as him.

When somebody crosses the line

to becoming an obsessive-compulsive gamer,

it's very rare that they can ever go back to being a normal gamer.

The alcoholic comes to us

thinking he's having a problem with the third or the fourth beer.

The problem is not the third or fourth beer, the problem is the first.

So we suggest, look,

if you don't want to have a problem with the fourth or the fifth or the sixth hour of your video game,

don't play the first minute and then you'll never get to the fifth hour.

Since leaving the clinic,

Leo has re-entered education and has been accepted at university.

I'd say my state of mind is completely different.

Now, I'm more independent, self-assured,

got more self-confidence.

Looking back on my time that I spent gaming,

it's not something that I'm especially proud of.

But it's a part of my life and it happened for a reason,

so now I can move forward,

using those experiences to better myself in the future.

It's the beginning of the day at New College,

a boarding school for blind and visually impaired students just outside Worcester.

Andrea is deputy head girl.

I came to this school when I was ten.

So in January I will be in my eighth year here.

The liquid level indicator is to help me know when the cup is almost full, so that I don't scald myself.

BEEPING

As I get older, my cells die in my retinas.

So, now I'm totally blind in my left eye

and in my right eye I can sometimes see light.

When I could see, I could see colours. I loved colour.

And that's what I really miss.

I can remember what colour things are by the texture of the clothes.

But sometimes I use a colour probe.

-AUTOMATED VOICE

-'Purple.

'Black.'

For blind people, digital technology sometimes provides clever solutions.

But it can also bring huge challenges.

Because I am deputy headgirl, I do get a lot of e-mails.

I get about 30 a day.

So, I always have to keep on top of it.

To enable Andrea to use a computer,

she has a speech package called Jaws,

which reads back the text on screen.

AUTOMATED VOICE READS QUICKLY

If I wanted to, I could slow it down.

-AUTOMATED VOICE

-'Slower sl-sl-sl-sl-sl-slower, slower.'

So it would be like this.

-VOICE READS SLOWLY

-'Senior Christmas party meeting, 16th November...'

When I first used Jaws, my friends laughed at me because it was that slow

and they've had theirs gabbling away. And now I have mine gabbling away,

so you just train your ear to understand it.

AUTOMATED VOICE READS VERY QUICKLY

As I can't use the mouse because I'm blind,

I have to learn all the shortcuts.

For example, when I'm spell checking my work, we have to press F7.

And to ignore it, it's Alt-G.

And to change it, it's Alt-C.

The number of short cuts that I know are about 30.

I'm studying A-level theatre studies, A-level PE and A-level health and social care.

Morning, Andrea.

Morning.

-How are you?

-OK.

-Jolly good.

Right, first of all then, we're going to have a recap on the behaviourist theory.

And the first key point we're going to be writing down is that we learn by being given a reward.

When she's writing notes for essays,

Andrea uses an electronic Braille strip

rather than the speech package.

Basically, the Braille strip brings everything which I do on the laptop up in Braille.

I'll type and then keep flicking my finger back

to read the Braille strip, to see what I've just written.

Second key point then?

-Punishment?

-Punishment.

We learn through being punished.

The teachers give us worksheets and text books

in Braille or electronically.

I personally prefer Braille because it can get a bit dull just listening to a synthetic voice

and because it's all one tone it sounds a bit like a robot.

AUTOMATED VOICE

It's using the internet that poses real problems for Andrea

and for many other blind people.

A few of my friends can use the internet very well,

because they've learned which web pages are accessible.

Some of my other friends are just like me and they find it more hard.

Andrea's friend Megan is a more confident internet user.

Because most websites don't apply accessibility standards for page design,

navigation can be difficult.

Because the speech package then reads everything on the page.

The first slot of links that will come up are the standard links with Google -

images, videos, maps and all that.

So, I need to bypass all these links really.

Things like "Donate now".

You tend to find that some sites are better than others

because they have a pretty simple layout.

Sites that tend to be difficult

are things where there are lots of graphics.

On sites which are thoughtfully designed,

images are identified by their title, followed by the file type,

for example, jpeg.

On other sites, an image will read as absolute rubbish.

It will literally read,

"Back slash, back slash, c, caret, underscore, line, dash..."

a bit like Morse code really!

So, what's Andrea's solution for using the internet?

When I get set research to do,

I will find a member of staff who will sit with me.

I will tell them what to put in, so they're not doing my work for me.

But they will basically be my eyes.

So we've got internet book list, book information about it.

We've got Shadow Of A Gunman, summary.

Then we've got, sort of reviews of performances.

The summary one might be useful.

-Shadow Of A Gunman summary.

-Yeah.

-OK.

The way I normally find my way around the school

is outside I'll use my white stick.

Inside I will trail along the walls.

Andrea has been trying out a new GPS device. It operates like a sat-nav.

She's programmed it to help her on routes outside school,

which she often uses.

I will do the route and record a landmark on the route.

And when I go to do that route again,

it will tell me where the landmarks are.

-ELECTRONIC JINGLE AND AUTOMATED VOICE

-'School gate.

'Three-way intersection.

'Street with no name crossing Whittington Road.

'On street with no name.

'School entrance.

'Driveway two.'

It can be really useful if you're lacking confidence

and the Trekker Breeze will speak the landmarks

so if you're feeling lost, you won't feel lost any more.

I don't believe...!

'In the evenings I hang around with my friends.'

-Anyway, are you coming to tea?

-No.

-Why?

-Because it's manky.

-Is it?

-Actually, what is it?

-It's turkey meatballs.

-Oh, yeah, I quite like that, actually.

And she keeps in touch with friends and family with her mobile.

My mobile phone has speech on it.

-AUTOMATED VOICE

-'This.

'S. Is.

'E. Andrea.

'Hi, this is Andrea.

'Select. Send.'

You can join in with everyone texting each other. I think it's really good.

With technology, I don't suppose I feel disadvantaged

because even though sighted people can do things a lot faster and they can do more things on the internet,

we can always find ways around it even though it can be slower.

This is an advert for a mobile phone, but it's not a TV ad.

It's what's known as a viral advertisement, part of an online campaign.

In 2009,

spending on online advertising overtook the amount spent on TV ads.

Viral marketing is the type of campaign that people will want to forward to their friends.

This mobile phone viral is one of Paul's latest.

The phone's very cheap and colourful

and as social networking is the main feature

we thought it would be cool

if we gave four social butterflies, people with a lot of friends,

the chance to create an army

and fight with paints the colour of their phones.

Once the advert has been made, the challenge is to make people aware of it,

a process known as seeding.

The idea behind seeding as a metaphor is we plant it into the social web

and then it'll sprout out and become very visible online.

If we've got a campaign that's quite targeted,

if we want someone to look at a mobile phone with social networking features,

we'd probably go to a network of blogs

that was interested in people looking for cool new features or groundbreaking technology.

Paul is able to track and measure the success of the viral adverts he sees.

Once we've launched a viral,

tracking it is important because the client wants to see results in almost real time

and there are tools we have to do that.

This is an example of the data that we get back.

This one's from the mobile phone campaign discussed earlier.

We can see this is the total and we'll be the first to know about it.

There's a map which shows us which countries are the most interested in the campaign.

We get told how people find the video, their age and their genders.

We can learn who's enjoying the video the most

and who we should maybe target more in the future.

This shows us audience attention as we go through the clip.

At the start, people aren't sure what to make of it

then they get interested at the end.

For any average campaign we're usually happy with in excess of a million views,

and we always want a target to get over five million views in a campaign

because that's a huge amount of engagement.

Virals have a different delivery model to that of mainstream advertising.

But they still have to abide by the rules enforced by the Advertising Standards Authority.

The ASA's remit expands to certain areas of online advertising,

so we cover advertising that appears in paid space.

That includes pop-up banner ads,

virals, e-mails and sales promotions wherever they appear online.

We have follow their guidelines and make our content acceptable for an online audience.

This includes not being allowed to pretend that we're an individual

who has no affiliation with the company and we're not allowed to deceive intentionally.

When we post a video we have to make it clear that it's commercial content

and it was posted by an affiliate of the company that we're advertising.

Out of the total amount of complaints we receive each year,

as a percentage of those,

Internet advertising represents around 13%,

which might not sound high but that makes it around the second most- complained-about advertising media.

In terms of having an ad withdrawn from cyberspace,

it's slightly different from having an ad removed from TV.

We can do that instantly.

But if an ad is winging around cyberspace into people's inboxes,

we can't go into their inboxes and retrieve them

but we received only a small handful of complaints about viral advertising

out of the 26,000 or so complaints we do have.

Virals tend to be quite edgy, quite dynamic and cheeky and jokey,

but they're targeted at an audience who engage with that

and be less likely to be offended and complain.

And what makes virals attractive to advertisers is that viewers

actively choose to watch them, unlike ads on TV.

If you have a slot on the television show's commercial break, you know your advert has been played to

X million people, but you don't know if they have the TV muted,

or if they're having a cup of tea or have just left the room.

With viral, if we get a recorded view to one of our sites, our embeds,

we know that somebody has pressed play, watched most of the the video,

so the quality of engagement is much higher than that of television.

As well as being targeted by online advertisers,

young people are now being recruited to promote products online.

Melissa's just 14 and is what's called a brand ambassador.

The sort of campaigns I've done in the past is things like deodorants,

games consoles, work safety, Talk To Frank.

We use brand ambassadors or young people

with verifiable parental consent who want to get involved in marketing

goods or services to their peers.

There's about 10,000 young people between the ages of 13 and 24.

This is a briefing document, and it tells you what you have to do for that brand.

You get sent a target. So it could be three MSN conversations,

four message board posts, all sorts of things like that.

Your target is to do those within the time set.

Today Mel has been given a new marketing task - to promote

the organisation she works for in order to get other young people on board as brand ambassadors.

This is a Facebook message.

It just gives them an idea of a Dubit Insider website is.

I'm actually on a message board site that a lot of teens use.

If I was going to go to a message board site,

I'd go to a teen site because I'd be more likely to get teenagers' attention there

than going to maybe a site on just health or something.

I have also sent this e-mail to my friends.

It's one message sent to everybody, so it's easier.

And brand ambassadors do get rewarded for their work.

I was only 12 when I first found the website and I thought it was too good to be true at first.

Because it meant being paid and getting merchandise

just for telling your friends about a company.

If you've done a lot of work you get up to £40 in cheques or vouchers.

If it comes from me, a young person, people are more likely to hear.

But it's best to tell someone that you're promoting a product.

All brand ambassadors, when they're online or doing any

sort of commercial activity, have to always tell people they're involved with the brand

or product and it's not something they're doing off their own back.

There are specific rules about not targeting children inappropriately, such as products that are unsuitable

for them such as alcohol, gambling products or trying to target kitchen knives to under-16s.

It's an inappropriate type of product.

The internet made promoting different because, if you're out on the street,

and suddenly somebody just handed you a leaflet that you didn't know about,

I don't think you'd really take it. So I think the internet is better

because more people are more likely to read it, click on the links,

go to the website, know more about it instead of just handing things out on the street.

Communicating your thoughts and ideas to the world has never been easier.

Carrie is 19 and Mike is 17.

Both are students and both are bloggers.

200 million people are out there blogging

in what's called the blogosphere, and many of those are under 18.

On my blog I normally write about shops and places I've been, so today

I'm off to Camden Passage in Angel to find out something to write about.

I started blogging when I was about 16.

I wanted to have my own little piece of the internet

and I wanted to be able to put on there whatever I wanted.

I've been really surprised by how popular my blog has got in just over the past year and a half.

I get around 2,500 readers coming every single day.

I try not to talk too much about, "This is the latest collection from so and so."

It's more personal.

I think readers really like that.

It's sort of an insight into somebody else's life.

You want to take your blog somewhere.

You need to write something that means something to other people.

They'll come to your blog and they'll take something away from it,

even if that's just inspiration via your photography, perhaps.

At the moment I'm uploading my photos, editing them a bit, and I'll put them on my blog.

Carrie blogs about her passion for fashion.

But Mike, on the other hand, chronicled his adventures,

as he became the youngest person to sail solo around the world.

The reason for doing the blog was both for me and for everyone else.

Most people just sail over the horizon and you don't hear from them,

so I wanted people to know what it was really like to be out there sailing in the middle of an ocean.

But I also wanted to make a very good record for myself.

So I can now look back and I can see what I actually did.

I guess, at the top of the mast...

is as good a place as any to do a video, right?

Had to come up here to release the sail which is caught.

I hate heights!

Just covered everything - how I was feeling, the food,

what it was like, the conditions, some of the wildlife as well.

'Hey, hey, dolphins!'

Video blogs are great because a picture tells a thousand words, and a video must tell a heck of a lot.

So, it was great to be able to show people exactly what a 50ft wave looks like.

Sailing alone can be very lonely, but that's part of the challenge.

The blog actually helped, seeing completely random people from everywhere in the world

comment and write back, and seeing their supportive messages was a big help to me.

When I first started blogging and started getting comments,

I was like, "Wow, where have all these people come from?

"Why are they talking to me?"

It's an odd feeling. I received so many lovely comments saying, "I really like what you do,"

but you do get the bad ones, and it sort of makes you think, "Oh, no!"

But if you want to blog you have to know that anyone can come and visit and anyone can comment.

I think blogging is becoming more and more relaxed.

It's more and more social, and I think it's good because it's more inviting.

People can now go on and respond to blogs and write blogs themselves

and become part of this community as well.

This community comes to expect their regular blog updates, and this can put pressure on the bloggers.

I update my blog around every other day.

People learn to sort of rely on you. It can become like a job.

I was quite surprised how eager a lot of the other guys reading the blog were.

Sometimes, when I was a little late they would post comments saying, "Where is the next one?"

I'd be sitting thinking, "Easy now, it's coming, it's coming!"

Advances in technology enabled Mike to update the blog regularly from his boat in the middle of the ocean.

With video blogging, it's quite expensive to upload them from the middle of the ocean,

so to work my way around that and to get some more video blogs up there

I asked people, the public, to sponsor them.

So they would pay about £50 for a 30-second video, because that's how much it costs.

Because people were sponsoring that, I was able to upload more, so the public were able to interact.

How a lot of blogs make their money, just through advertising.

You'll find that if your blog does get more popular then

you'll get a lot of e-mails from different PR companies,

trying to sell you their products and for you to write about them on your blog.

Sometimes they're going to be relevant, and if they are, I often do post them.

I make a little bit of money, but enough to keep the blog alive.

Carrie uses social networks and microblogging technology to promote her own blog.

I use Twitter to promote my new posts.

When a new post goes live, then on Twitter a little Tweet will go out saying the name of my post.

I think it's about your online visibility.

If you're willing to make a Twitter account to promote your blog, or even a Facebook page where people

can stumble across it, or links on other people's blogs as well, that's a great way of getting new readers.

With the amount people go on the internet, I think almost anyone could start a blog.

There are so many platforms out there.

I think a blog can show people who you are, and that would open doors

to all sorts of opportunities, so it can lead to interesting places.

I think it's relatively easy. If you know how to use a word processing programme,

then you'll be able to blog.

It's a great way of putting yourself out there because literally anybody can read it.

Right, so I finished my blog. All the pictures are uploaded and all the text is written.

I'm just going to publish it and let everyone on Twitter know.

Hopefully everyone will get reading and leave me comments.

Subtitling by Red Bee Media Ltd

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