HELLO FUTURE: Can Technology Help Us Break Our Addiction to Technology?

Speaker 1 (00:07):
We are living at the start of the fifth Industrial Revolution,
and as you know, I am a huge optimist about
technology and how it can make our lives more human,
filled with more connection. But that doesn't mean that I
want us all walking around like robots, and in fact,
sometimes with the advent of new technology, it means using
less of it in our day to day lives. Hello Future,
it's me KAV. This is a dispatch from the Digital Frontier.
The planet is Earth, the year is twenty twenty six.
My name is Kevin Surilli. You can listen to all
of the latest Hello Future episodes however you get your
podcasts and of course on the iHeartMedia app, make sure
to downloaded. It's really one of the greatest audio apps
that's out there on the market because you can just
go into the backstories and follow whatever rabbit hole your
curiosity leads you down. Of this program, know that I
have been on a mission this year to try to
lower my screen time. All over the country, more and
more Americans and dare I say global citizens are trying
to get off their phone. They recognize that it is
an addiction. The dopamine levels in our brain are wired
in a way to be on these apps all the time.
I mean, I'm old enough to remember when I would
go on a social media app and I would reach
the bottom of my feed and it would say all
caught up. But nowadays it's designed to just keep going
and going and going and going. So I'm really grateful
to have my next guest on this program Jason Morales.
He's the co founder and CEO behind Until, and this
company really grabbed my attention. Their tagline is Reclaim your Time,
and it's I say, I want to reclaim my time
and attention. And it's an app that encourages people to
put your phone down to be more human. And the
background of this company is really interesting because he's united
some of the leading technologists in our country to get
behind this. Jason, thanks so much for showing up to
Meet the Future. Tell me a little bit about what
Until does and how you went from working in tech
to trying to get people offline.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yes, thank you, Kevin. Really appreciate joining you for this
broadcast and also love hearing about your journey, so it's
been great to catch up on that front. It's not
so dissimilar from mine. I have worked in tech for
the majority of my professional career, I frankly found myself
racked with this problematic use, this compulsion that I had
towards being always connected, always on my phone, and found
myself wanting to do something about it. I'm also a father.
I partnered with other parents who were having a common
conversation amongst us saying, what are we doing here for
the next generations? How are we setting up an unsustainable
environment for young people? And so these were certainly motivations
for how we came to develop until some of the background.
I was a technology strategist. I represented data and AI,
primarily data modeling and data warehousing, reporting, analytics, how we
use data. I worked for Microsoft for the majority of
that time, and I had a real emphasis and focus
on responsible use of data in that context, and so
my sort of internal and external brand was to promote
how we are being proactive and re sponsible with their
use of technology. I personally found the more I learned
about how data is used and how frankly tech vendors
were sort of exploiting the use of it, that it
was very invasive to see my behavior data or my
personal data being the basis by which I was advertised
to it got to a point where it was frankly
out of control. And so I really began this journey
looking to provide alternatives that communicated that technology does not
need to get into our business and levels that we
don't even know were agreeing to in order to work.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Nobody likes it sometimes like I'll be using technology to
your point, Jason, and suddenly I get all these ads
for stuff that came up in a conversation. But until
what does until do so, folks who are unfamiliar with it?

Speaker 2 (04:55):
What is it currently? So until we have started with
an app, and what it does is helped to create
a game and a little bit of a social experience
for how we unscreen from our device. In effect, it
helps me to measure how much I'm off my phone
rather than measuring how much on my phone. The way
it works, as you, a player would open until up
and a timer would begin, And through a little bit
of research that we did in the early use cases,
we came to find that the timer alone wasn't good.
It was nice to meet certain milestones. Can I go
fifteen minutes without being compulsive about looking at my phone?
Can I go thirty minutes after that? Or sixty minutes,
and we created a reward system points that reward the
player for meeting those milestones. I get a point for
fifteen minutes, two points for thirty minutes. I get a
little bonus with five points if I go a full
hour or more.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
Patrick Kennedy is doing incredible work on mental health in
America and I was at earlier this year. I was
attending one of their events in Washington, DC, and you know,
his wife Amy Kennedy said, how ironic it is that
we live in a time when there's now a market
for this basically the product that you've created of getting
people to unscreen, which I love that word. How do
we unscreen this app until there is now a market
to get untethered from being on our phone? Twenty four
to seven? I mean, why do you think that is?
I mean, just analytically speaking, you've worked at the you know,
upper echelons of technology. The team that your advisory board are.
It's folks who have worked on gaming like Fortnite and
Call of Duty. There's a broader tech backlash happening, but
with this I don't even associate it with the tech backlash.
I associate it with people just want their brains back.
From where I sit, there's a difference between toys and technology,
and I think a lot of people are marketing toys
like technology, but really it's just toys.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
There does seem to be a backlash. I don't know
if it's that I'm at the forefront of seeing this
movement occurring, but there seems to be so many different
angles where people are really pushing back. And interestingly enough,
kind of your original question, there's this cone that I
liked right that the only way out is through fighting
against it. Your resistance actually creates more tension. And so
it has been a motivation for me in multiple contexts
to begin the process of healing or overcoming by observing
where the behavior starts and in effect considering what that
is really bringing awareness to what it is going into
the problem more directly how that relates with until of course,
it's completely ironic and frankly peculiar maybe not intuitive that
you would have an app that helps you to get
away from your apps, something that seems counterintuitive in that,
and that being said, this is also where we are at.
We have to meet ourselves, We have to meet people
where they are to begin the process of overcoming this
problem that they're being faced with, and in doing that,
I think that awareness or that consciousness that comes into
that engagement becomes more enriched and more realistic. We're not
trying to moralize or fight against the problem in a
way that again creates a tension where it's a good
versus bad or you know, but more to really understand
the complexity of it and address it where we can
meet it. We can't solve the whole problem. We are
not even thinking for a minute that any app will
solve the whole problem. How can we provide tools that
address the aspects of the problem where we can make
measurable change in our lives and move forward.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
What are some of those tools?

Speaker 2 (08:56):
Great question. Well, the first target area is just to
com pulsiveness, the compulsion that comes so with receiving a notification,
with having a thought, oh I want the answer to this,
I know where to go. I'm going to continuously reach
for my device and having experience this personally. The idea
of like even the ghost notifications, right, feeling a buzz
in my pocket for something that it didn't happen, you know,
there was no actual notification. This compulsion was the first
area to address. The tools that we bring to light
are to in effect put a reward mechanism where we're
trying to go fifteen minutes before we engage the phone
or another app or whatever else we would like to
look at. And so what an effect happens is you
reach for the phone, you see your timer, you see
oh wait, I'm three minutes away, I'm four or five,
ten minutes. But whatever it is, I'm going to wait
until I hit that fifteen minutes or that thirty minutes,
that hour before I pursue what it is that I'm
trying to look at I think I need on my phone.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
In addition to being the CEO, you're the growth strategist.
I mean, right now you're an app, but really you're
tapping into a much broader movement and you're gonna have
to come back on the program because I want to
dive into this broader movement. But how do you see
UNTIL growing? Is it through partnerships with ed tech, is
it through higher education? Is it through K through twelve?
How do you see UNTIL growing as a platform.

Speaker 2 (10:27):
Well that's also an excellent question, difficult question. So much
of the problem, any problem when we're looking at topics
of addiction or self help. A lot of it is
framed in a context of saying, I need to do
this myself, this is the problem I have, I need
to solve it. And so one of the other foundational
aspects of Until's approach is that this timer, this opportunity
to fulfill this time. We actually call it a fill,
to fill our time with, you know, unscreening and doing
something else. We created a social mechanic to it, so
now I can join a sink a sink fill, I
can sync up with others to fill my time and
multiply my points, multiply my reward, and now have an
accountability with others while I'm playing, have a sense of
community and connection. What are we doing when we're on
screening and we're of course not engaging in real time
during that, but looking to meet that goal and then
share what your flywheel.

Speaker 1 (11:28):
What I'm hearing is get people offline, but get them
to go in real life to some type of human
to human activation. That's interesting. The way that I look
at it, which I find fascinating is there is such
a market for human to human activations and meetups and
doing things that candidly folks are just good old fashioned fun,
going on a hike, going to a museum. You know,
I see all these ads for candlelight concerts or Harry
themed corn maze. I mean, like the sky's the limit.
But it's stuff that is so much more fun than
sitting and staring at your screen. And if you've got
kids out there, I am sure we've all seen it.
They're walking around like zombies. And I'm an optimist. So
I am so grateful that Jason Morales, CEO of Until
I was able to come on and to break this down.
Please Jason come back. Everybody go check it out. If
people want to learn more about Until, how do they
find out more?

Speaker 2 (12:28):
So we spell until with two l's, so Until is
actually U N T I L L dot app and
that's where you'd find our website and you can learn more.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
Awesome, Thank you so much and having great tomorrow today,