What is Real?
We bring small groups together to notice how technology is shaping their attention, test practical changes, and make more room for the people, activities, and experiences that matter. Honest conversation, useful tools, and supportive relationships are all part of the work.
What isn't Real?
The aim is not less technology for its own sake. Technology is useful, social, and often necessary; the aim is greater freedom to direct attention toward friendship, concentration, rest, movement, creativity, and the life you want to build—not to rely on willpower alone.
A life, in weeks
A screen can help you work, learn, create, and stay close to loved ones far away. The problems begin when our digital habits undermine these things.
Based on your browser region. Choose another country, then adjust the dial to match your own screen time.
2025 DataReportal / GWI estimate for internet users aged 16+.
This doesn't refer to things that you merely dislike doing. These are the things that could disappear from your life tomorrow and leave nothing but the time behind.
Each column is one year and each dot is one week-equivalent. If you enter a birthday, the unfinished year stays between time lived and time remaining instead of being redistributed. From age 15 onward, the mix follows Statistics Canada’s 2022 age-group averages; childhood is illustrative because the survey begins at age 15.
Nothing is added or removed. The weeks reorganize by what the time serves, making the proportions of sleep, personal care, work, care for others, and leisure easier to compare.
Watch screen-time cells pulse throughout waking life—work, learning, care, connection, and leisure. Their original colour remains visible because the screen is serving the activity, not replacing it. Sleep remains untouched.
Selected screen-time dots become solid, pause, then move to the left edge of each activity band. Once they settle, their outline marks the share of each part of life being crowded out.
The field now contains the same lost weeks—nothing has been added. They have simply been brought forward so their weight is harder to overlook.
For ages 15–79, each column uses the population-average daily hours for its age group in Statistics Canada’s 2022 Time Use Survey: 15–24, 25–34, 35–44, 45–54, 55–64, and 65+. The chart does not force those columns back into predetermined lifetime totals; the sorted bands are the totals produced by the age profiles. Birth through age 14 remains an illustrative bridge because the survey covers people age 15 and older. These are cross-sectional averages, not a prediction of any one person’s life. The five labels are transparent roll-ups of the survey’s activity categories, not official category names themselves. View Statistics Canada table 45-10-0104-01.
The screen layer never appears inside sleep. It is weighted most heavily toward work and learning, followed by connection and leisure, then care and daily life. No survey can decide which use feels disconnected for a particular person, so the white portion uses the visitor’s own estimate—not a diagnosis. Once disconnected, that time is shown crowding out sleep and chosen leisure most strongly. Read the study.
The course
The goal is for each session to build on the last.
Notice where attention goes, what triggers habitual use, and what other parts of life get crowded out.
Make practical changes to devices and surroundings so better choices do not depend on willpower alone.
Participants can also try supporting technology—from simplified phones and compact e-readers to physical tools that interrupt habitual app use—and evaluate what genuinely improves the quality of their attention.
Replace unwanted loops with activities and relationships that offer something genuinely worth moving toward.
Put rhythms and relationships in place that help changes last beyond the four weeks.
Get involved
Real is in it's early stages; If you want to take part, support the work financially, or contribute research and ideas, we would love to hear from you.
Thank you. We look forward to speaking!
Evan Price
Founder, Real
Rylan Shoji
Co-founder, Real
