UNPAID EST. 243 / PTW
An initiative of 243 Collective

They already
priced your time.
Prove them wrong
about what it is worth.

You are not the customer. You are the inventory. Somebody ran the numbers on your attention before you ever opened the app.

Run your receipt For parents
Their rate$0.60 / hour
Your in-school use43 min / day
Paid to you$0.00
A school hallway wall covered edge to edge in hundreds of blank paper receipt strips.
Week one. The price wall.
Section 01 / The rate

Six companies. One country. Twelve months.

$0BPaid for American attention in 2025. Six companies.
0MActive US social media identities, October 2025
0 hrsHours a year each, at two hours a day
$0.00What one hour of you is worth to them. A floor.

Rate: $116.58B paid for American attention in 2025. Meta US revenue $74.78B (Meta 10-K, FY2025), YouTube US ads about $19.46B (derived from Alphabet 10-K), Snap North America $3.47B, Pinterest US and Canada $3.05B, Reddit US $1.79B, TikTok US about $14.03B (third-party forecast). Divided by 254 million active US social media identities (DataReportal, October 2025) at two hours a day (EMARKETER, 2026), or 730 hours each. That is $0.6288 an hour. We round down and print $0.60. Every assumption in that chain pushes the real number up, never down. This rate replaces the $0.90 we published before. See the correction.

Section 02 / Do the math yourself

Run your own receipt.

Move the sliders. The receipt recalculates live at their rate of $0.60 an hour. Change nothing and you get the median: 43 minutes a day, 180 days, one school year.

Write the source next to every number you use. If you cannot source it, it does not go on the wall. That rule is the whole campaign. Adults go first, and they show their work too.

243 Collective
UNPAID / EST. 243 / PTW
RUN YOUR OWN
Live math / school year
Hours sold / year129
Their rate / hour$0.60
Inventory denied
$77.40
Hours taken back
129
Amount they paid you
$0.00
Times 275 students35,475
Years of human life4.05

No refunds. No returns.

Your numbers live in the link, not on a server.

Section 03 / The design

None of this is your fault. All of it is on purpose.

What this is

  • An argument with a business model that sells a young person's hours to advertisers.
  • A price, printed at hallway scale, with the source next to it.
  • Evidence anyone can check, including the parts where we guessed.
  • Four weeks, one crew, one wall.

What this is not

  • This is not about your phone.
  • It is not a rule, a consequence, or a compliance program.
  • It is not a lecture about willpower. The design beat willpower on purpose.
  • Nobody here tracks your device, your hours, or your name.

Time: 97 percent of students use a phone during the school day and the median in-school use is 43 minutes (Common Sense Media, “Constant Companion,” 2023, n=203 Android devices, ages 11–17).

Section 04 / The blueprint

Four parts, engineered, shipped, and measured.

PTW-02-A

Infinite scroll

A page with no bottom. A stopping point is a decision, so the design removed the stopping point.

PTW-02-B

Variable reward

Sometimes the pull is worth it. Sometimes it is nothing. Unpredictable payouts hold attention longer than reliable ones. This was known before the feed existed.

PTW-02-C

Streaks

A counter you did not ask for, that you now stand to lose. The cost of leaving goes up every day you stay.

PTW-02-D

Notification timing

Alerts are held and released when you are most likely to return. The moment is chosen. It is not the moment the thing happened.

These mechanisms are described in company documents and in state attorney general complaints against Meta and TikTok. Read the filings and the earnings decks yourself on The Receipts.

A wooden table of freshly harvested vegetables in warm afternoon light.
Week three. The other ledger.
Section 05 / The other ledger

The hours do not disappear. They go somewhere.

0Hours taken back per student, per year
0Hours across 275 students
0 yrsOf continuous human life, kept

Lead with the years, not the dollars. The money is how they measure you. The hours are how you measure yourselves. Week three hangs the harvest receipt beside the price wall so the two ledgers sit in the same hallway and argue.

The four weeks
Week 01

The Price

The price wall goes up. The rate gets printed at the size of a door.

Week 02

The Design

Blueprints of the mechanisms. Read the filing. Nothing here is an accident.

Week 03

The Other Ledger

The harvest receipt. Hours grown, fed, kept, and counted.

Week 04

The Us

The room, the showcase, and the ledger goes public. Admission is free.

We are not asking you to put your phone down. We are asking you to send them the bill.

Break the algorithm

For YouJoin the crew, learn the six moves, take the copy lines.Youth → For ParentsWhat this is, what we never track, and what to say at home.Adults → The ReceiptsEvery number, every source, and every place we guessed.Proof →