Clever young people are making serious money posting videos of themselves - often doing not much - on YouTube. Sean Flaherty takes a peek.
Any parent can tell you teenagers eat up a lot of time on computers.
Like about 23 hours a day if you let them.
Give them a laptop/tablet and a pair of headphones and say bye-bye.
Exactly what they're up to varies widely, although it's a good bet YouTube's somewhere in the mix.
Increasingly, however, their YouTube is not your YouTube.
You know how the crazy-popular video-sharing site is an ever-growing jungle of content showcasing pretty much everything humanity has ever filmed?
And you know how for the casual user watching the new Star Wars trailer can easily turn into a couple of hours surfing Star Wars out-takes before you realise you haven't eaten for six days while you've been hunting down obscure music videos from 1983?Well that's not how it works for a 14-year-old.
These days, for a certain audience of young people, the random jungle walk is being led by a smartypants spirit guide.
When your teenager is laughing their head off it's probably not because they're watching a funny movie clip, but because they're watching someone taking the mickey out of a movie clip. Or taking the mickey out of themselves.
Or desconstructing a typical teenage experience.
These wisecrackers are called YouTubers.
They're the smart kid at the back of the class with the quickest wit in the west.
They're why my kids never watch TV any more.
The most popular is a 25-year-old Swedish guy called Felix Kjellberg who goes by the name of PewDiePie.
He reportedly earns $9 million a year though advertising on clips shot in his bedroom which basically involve him playing video games and commenting on them.
Plenty of people do this - he just does it better.
The aim of the game is to get as many views as possible but the real currency is in subscribers - an odd echo of old media such as newspapers and magazines which seek to establish a loyal subscriber base to give advertisers certainty.
At the moment PewDiePie is the YouTube champion with 32.5 million subscribers.
That's not a bad effort when the rest of the top 10 list for most subscribers includes the official channels of superstars like Rhianna and Eminem with massive marketing machines behind them.
What it points to is an ability to grow an audience organically, based on nothing more than your wit and the hyper-connectedness of your fans spreading the word.
This is probably scaring the hell out of traditional media, although it should be noted the likes of PewdiePie still leverage off content like gaming and movies put out by traditional media so at some point the circle might join and there will be a Hollywood movie about PewDiePie which will in turn be ripped apart by a new generation of YouTubers.
I asked my kids what it's all about.
My daughter Rosa (14) can rattle off her top 10 YouTubers as quickly as I could name my favourite footballers or rock bands at her age.
At the moment her favourites include Danisnotonfire (the funny guy who can help you laugh at your own social awkwardness), AmazingPhil (the sweet person every one trusts) and Superwoman Lily Sing (not afraid to laugh at herself, or dress up as her mum and dad).
Rosa says the key attribute is that they are ''really good at connecting with people''.
''They're kind of like the funnier version of your own friends.''
Evolving more quickly than radioactive spiders, YouTubers are branching out from using other content as a springboard and coming up with their own material.
''Like they will do a list like the top 10 things nobody ever says - and they will do it so much funnier than you ever could.''
It's a competitive universe where new faces are popping up all the time and the established names often join forces to double their firepower.
So how does Rosa find out about new YouTubers?
''A funny video name will pop up in your sidebar and you might go and watch that. Or if a YouTuber does a collaboration they might be like Go and check out this guy's channel.''
So does she spends too much time watching YouTubers.
''It's just interesting because there's always something new. A new take, a new idea, a new collaboration.
''And if you get bored you can go on to the next video. It's not hard to get sucked into the wormhole.''
