Show the receipts

Check our math.
Tell us where
we are wrong.

Every figure on every wall is here, with the arithmetic, the source, and the places we had to estimate. A number without a source is a rumor.

A desk covered in stacked printed documents under a lamp.

Step by step

How we got to sixty cents.

1. The money: $116.58 billion. What six companies were paid for American attention in 2025. Meta US $74.78B, YouTube US about $19.46B, TikTok US about $14.03B, Snap North America $3.47B, Pinterest US and Canada $3.05B, Reddit US $1.79B. Four of those six are filed with the SEC. The YouTube line is derived, because Alphabet does not split YouTube by country. The TikTok line is a forecast, because ByteDance files nothing.
2. The people: 254 million. Active social media user identities in the United States, October 2025. Identities, not people, because one person can hold several accounts.
3. The hours: 730 hours each. Two hours a day, every day, for a year. Two hours is the top of the published range for US social network use.
4. The division: 185.42 billion hours. 254 million identities times 730 hours. Then $116.58 billion divided by 185.42 billion hours.
5. The rate: $0.6288 an hour. We round it down and print $0.60. This is the number that goes on the wall at the size of a door, and it is a floor, not a price.

The school-year math

From 43 minutes to 4.05 years.

In-school use: 43 minutes, median. Not eight hours. We use the median in-school figure and nothing larger, because the larger numbers measure something else.
Per student, per year: 43 minutes x 180 school days = 129 hours.
Inventory denied, per student: 129 hours x $0.60 = $77.40. That is what those hours were worth to them at the floor rate. Not revenue they lost. Inventory they do not get.
Across 275 students: 129 x 275 = 35,475 hours, which is 4.05 years of continuous human life, and $21,285.00.
Which number leads: The years. Always. The dollars are how they measure you. The hours are how we measure ourselves, and the two totals never get merged into one line.

Argue it down

Sixty cents is the floor.

Here is every soft spot in the rate, listed on purpose. Read them and notice what they have in common. Not one of them makes the number smaller. Tighten any assumption on this page and the price of your hour goes up.

The rate is a floor

The YouTube US figure is derived. Alphabet does not split it. If YouTube earns more per American than Alphabet does overall, the rate goes up.
The TikTok figure is a forecast. ByteDance files nothing. If the forecast is low, the rate goes up.
254 million counts identities, not people. Fewer real people means more dollars each, and the rate goes up.
Two hours a day is the top of the published range. If real feed time is lower, the rate goes up.
We rounded 62.9 cents down to 60 cents.
We left out every other ad-supported feed in America. Adding any of them pushes the rate up.
Nothing in this chain makes the number smaller. Argue it down if you can. You will find you cannot.

What we do not claim

We do not claim phones cause depression. That research is correlational and we build nothing on it.
We do not claim our four weeks will match a national campaign's results. We are copying a mechanism, not a budget.
We do not claim any individual student owes anybody anything.

Primary sources

Go read them yourself.

Meta annual report, fiscal year 2025United States revenue, $74.78 billion. Note 2. The largest line in the rate.SEC filing DataReportal, Digital 2026: United States254 million active social media user identities in the United States, October 2025. The denominator.Kepios analysis EMARKETER, US time spent with social networks, 2026Active users will top two hours a day. The other half of the denominator.Forecast Common Sense Media, “Constant Companion,” 202397 percent of students use a phone during the school day. Median in-school use, 43 minutes. n=203 Android devices, ages 11 to 17.Research report Meta annual reports on SEC EDGARRisk factors and revenue disclosures in the company's own words, filed under penalty of law.SEC filings The 2021 internal disclosuresDocuments released by a former employee describing what the company knew about its own products.Background Bryan, Yeager et al., PNAS, 2016Randomized experiment, 536 eighth graders. Adversary and status framing changed real behavior where health messaging did not.Peer reviewed Paluck, Shepherd, Aronow, PNAS, 201656 schools. Change spread through well-connected students, not through announcements.Peer reviewed

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.

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).

Correction log

What we got wrong, printed at the same size as the mistake.

12 August 2026 The rate: We published $0.90 an hour. It was wrong. The rate is $0.60. The old number rested on two figures that do not survive checking. We printed $92.67 billion as Meta’s United States and Canada revenue for the four quarters through Q1 2026. That figure is not in Meta’s filings. Meta’s filed United States and Canada revenue for 2025 is $78.87 billion, and the United States alone is $74.78 billion. We also printed 383 hours a year on the feed, and we cannot find a source for it. Our own rule is that a number without a source is a rumor. It was a rumor. Both errors ran the same direction: they made our number look bigger than we could prove. The rebuilt rate is lower and every line of it is sourced above.
12 August 2026 Inventory denied: The receipt used to read Revenue denied. That is economically wrong. If you stop scrolling, the impression gets sold to somebody else, so nobody loses revenue. What they lose is the inventory. The line now reads Inventory denied, and the hours still sit on their own separate line, because hours are not money.
12 August 2026 The slider: The calculator asked for minutes on the feed. The 43 minute median it is built on measures all phone use during the school day, not feed time. The slider now asks for minutes on your phone during the school day, and the rate it multiplies by is now a blended rate across six companies rather than Meta alone.
12 August 2026 Six smaller fixes: The FTC staff report is dated 19 September 2024, not 11 September. The FTC studied nine companies, not nine platforms. The metrics finding is on page 17, not page 26, and it counts metrics collected per service, not measurements held per person. The Meta multistate action was 33 states in federal court, 42 attorneys general in total. Reddit’s $10.79 is a quarterly figure. Every Common Sense Media citation now says 203 Android devices, ages 11 to 17.
Checked and held: Two numbers were challenged and stand. Snap’s advertising share is 87 percent of 2025 revenue as filed. Meta’s $57.03 is Meta’s own published sentence, not our arithmetic.

Found an error

Bring it to the crew. We will reprint the wall.

Show us where the number is wrong and we will fix it in public, with the correction printed at the same size as the mistake. That is the standard we are asking of the other side, so it is the standard we hold ourselves to first.

Check our math.Tell us wherewe are wrong.