therealproject.ca · A nonprofit initiative
The average Canadian is on track to spend 15+ years looking at their phone. Real is a nonprofit being built around the belief that this is a solvable problem, and that the only real place to start is with the people next to us.
The case for Real
Our digital habits are not serving us. The same platforms we use to work and connect are engineered to hold our attention, beyond what we intend, by some of the most sophisticated systems ever built. A response to this cannot require abstinence. It must insist on agency: the consistent capacity to choose how we spend our attention, rather than having it chosen for us.
Why hasn't this issue solved itself? We want to be where other people are. And right now, other people are online. Many of us have also failed to close the gap between what we each privately experience and what we publicly pretend. This keeps bad situations in place long after we stop believing in them.
We are being shaped by the same platforms in the same ways — our habits, our attention, and increasingly our sense of what normal looks like. The conversation about this has been going on for years. What has been missing is action: concrete, repeatable, evidence-based action that actually returns something to people. Not an app. Not a retreat. A network of motivated people dedicated to building something real.
"If you take a personal problem seriously enough, you will simultaneously solve a social problem."— Carl Jung
By the numbers
Canadian post-secondary students reports feeling lonely.
American College Health Association, National College Health Assessment
Rates of depression among adolescent girls more than doubled between 2012 and 2019 — coinciding precisely with the rise of smartphone adoption.
Twenge, J.M. et al., Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 2019
Young Canadian men aged 20 to 29 are now classified as NEET (not in employment, education, or training). Young men are disengaging from education, work, and civic life at unprecedented rates. The internet and video games is where their time is going instead.
Statistics Canada, Labour Force Survey, 2025
The mere presence of a smartphone on a desk measurably reduces available cognitive capacity — even face down, even silent.
Ward, A.F. et al., University of Chicago / Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2017
What Real does
Real has three concrete objectives. Every session, from the very first cohort, is designed to contribute to all three. Participation is never passive. Participants are part of the solution.
Outreach
Campus talks, community events, and partnerships with aligned organisations. The goal is to name the issue clearly, to help participants recognise their own experience, and to help connect participants on that basis.
Research
Every session is a study. Real will aim to collect data, gather feedback, publish findings, and improve over time. The academic foundation is robust and popular support for interventions and solutions appears to be strong and growing. What remains to be built is a large body of evidence from public programs. That is what Real is looking to generate.
Courses
Four weeks, one meeting a week. Honest conversation and evidence-supported tools — simpler phones, structured time away from screens, commitment devices, and the enduring power of people holding each other accountable.
The four-week program
Each session is one hour. Brief presentation, open discussion, and a concrete task to carry into the week. The structure is designed to build on itself — each week making the next one more honest and more useful.
Why is this worth solving? The session opens with an honest account of what each person struggles with most. The goal is to break the illusion that the difficulty is private. Members are introduced to one another and asked to connect their digital habits to the rest of their lives.
Suggested Task
Find someone to pair with and meet once outside the session. Notice how other people use their devices. Then notice how you do. Write down your personal why.
What did you notice in week one? What have people already tried? The session reviews the evidence and shares proven tools — lockboxes, simpler phones, selected products, scheduled offline blocks. Every participant should leave with something concrete to test.
Suggested Task
Implement one suggested solution. Report back on what happened.
What worked? What didn't? Why? The session is built around honest reporting rather than performance. It's not about success stories, but actual accounts of what happened when people tried to change something. Setbacks are information, not failures.
Suggested Task
Try one full day without a phone. Or, if that is too much, carve out a block — morning, evening, whenever. Come back and say what it felt like.
What comes next? What does reasonable phone use look like next week, and in a month? How is accountability maintained after the program ends? The session closes the loop on each person's why. Did they get closer to it? Together we make the case for consistent, modest effort over dramatic gestures.
Suggested Task
Name who you are doing this for. Externalise the why. Willing participants are invited to return as accountability partners for the next cohort.
The long view
The goal was never one city or one campus. It was always for this to be replicable. The kind of thing that spreads because it works, and works because it is honest about what it doesn't yet know.
Phase One — Now
Open to everyone. The people who join now are founding members. What they experience and report shapes every cohort that follows.
Phase Two
The underlying technology is the same but the experience is not. Men and women are affected differently and deserve a program that reflects that.
Phase Three
Open research, published findings, trained facilitators. A program that any university, school, or community organisation can adopt. The goal was never one room. It was always for this to spread.
"The way we spend our days is the way we spend our lives."— Annie Dillard
Get involved
Right now, Real is largely just an idea. I'm looking for the right people and institutional partners to build something with. The first session is currently being planned for summer or fall.
What is needed now are campus partners who can offer a room and their ideas, collaborators who want to help design and measure the program, and people who want to be in the room from the start. If this resonates — whether you want to join the first cohort, collaborate on the research, or simply think it is worth a conversation — please get in touch.
Evan Price
Founder, Real
evanjohnprice@gmail.com
therealproject.ca
Thank you. I look forward to speaking!