presented by moonshot
concept render
moonshot is a personal ai you wear behind your ear. preorders are $99, expected early december 2026, and fully refundable before it ships.
My screen time used to be 3 hours a day, and two of those were Clash Royale.
Then it hit 15.
That was a Wednesday two weeks ago: 15 hours and 4 minutes. 7 of those hours went to what my phone calls Social, and another 4 went to Entertainment.
I noticed one night when I wanted to tell my friend about my day and couldn't come up with anything. So I opened my settings and looked at the number.
I used to play sports and go to parties with my friends. I was chasing freedom.
Now I chase metrics, and it's literally my job. I write posts and newsletters for a startup, so I check views and likes all day. I'll check how many of you opened this email too.
It's not just me. Pew found that 40% of US teens are online almost constantly. Ten years ago it was 24%. Our whole generation is feeding the same machine, one tiny cog out of millions.
And it's sad, man. It really is. I had passion. We all have drive, and we're spending it on a rectangle.
the machine was built on purpose
Sean Parker, Facebook's first president, said the early goal was to keep users on the site as long as possible, by "exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology." He said they knew it and did it anyway.
Loren Brichter invented the pull-down you do to refresh your feed back in 2009. Apps can refresh on their own now, so the pull isn't needed. The Guardian argued it stuck around for the same reason slot machines have a lever. Pulling it yourself is part of the hook. Brichter has said it's addictive, and that he regrets the downsides.
Aza Raskin invented infinite scroll in 2006, so you'd never click "next page" again. He has since apologized for it. By his own math, it burns about 200,000 human lifetimes every day.
the app built to be deleted
Hinge relaunched as the dating app designed to be deleted. In its ads, the mascot Hingie gets killed off whenever two people click. Hinge's founder says its members now spend more time on dates than on the app.
Moonshot wants to do the same thing to the whole machine.
We're building Jalapeño, a personal AI that rests behind your ear. It has its own mic and speaker, and no camera, and your phone stays in your pocket. It's built to remember the little things, like the idea you had on Tuesday or the detail you almost forgot. It only listens when listening is on, and it's expected in early December.
This is our prototype right now. Tape, wires and all.
Yes, it's still tech. The difference is that it has no screen to pull you in.
blow up the machine tonight
Checking your screen time isn't enough. Research found that monitoring it alone doesn't change how people use their phones. These four things change the setup, and you can start tonight.
Charge your phone in another room. In UT Austin experiments with around 800 people, the ones whose phones were in another room scored best on the tests. On or off didn't matter. Part of your brain is busy not checking it.
Turn your screen gray. In studies, grayscale cut screen time by about 20 to 50 minutes a day. On iPhone, it's Settings, Accessibility, Display & Text Size, Color Filters, Grayscale.
Kill every notification that isn't a person. Clear the apps you don't need off your home screen, and keep only notifications from people, like texts and calls.
Block the internet on your phone for 2 weeks. In a 2025 study of 467 people, it improved well-being and mental health. Attention improved too, by about as much as 10 years of aging takes away. Calls and texts still work. Only 25% kept the block on the whole time, and the effect was still large.
I live in the moment on purpose now.
What's your screen time today? Hit reply and tell me the number.
Anish
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sources
Pew Research Center, "Teens, Social Media and AI Chatbots 2025": https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/12/09/teens-social-media-and-ai-chatbots-2025/
Engadget, "Sean Parker says Facebook 'exploits' human psychology" (Nov 9, 2017): https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/09/sean-parker-facebook-exploits-human-psychology/
Rough Type, on the Guardian's Oct 2017 story by Paul Lewis: https://roughtype.com/?p=8199
The National, on Aza Raskin and infinite scroll: https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/the-impact-of-doomscrolling-on-mental-health-technology-shapes-user-behaviour-1.1113134
Red Antler, Hinge "Designed to be Deleted": https://www.redantler.com/work/hinge
Entrepreneur, interview with Hinge founder Justin McLeod: https://entrepreneur.com/article/373227
Ward et al., "Brain Drain" (Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2017), via Newshub: https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/health/2017/06/smartphones-a-brain-drain-make-you-dumber-study.html
"Is life brighter when your phone is not?" grayscale study (Mobile Media & Communication, 2023): https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20501579231212062
CNN, grayscale and notification tips (June 2020): https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/11/health/smartphone-hack-reduce-screen-time-wellness/index.html
Castelo et al., "Blocking mobile internet on smartphones improves sustained attention, mental health, and subjective well-being" (PNAS Nexus, 2025): https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/4/2/pgaf017/8016017
Moonshot, Jalapeño: https://moonshot.computer
