We’re losingour kids to screens.
ariasol exists to fight back. To put a net in a child’s hand instead of a phone. To give parents and kids a reason to get outside, get curious, and build something real together.
Something is being lost between generations.
Go anywhere in public today. Look around. Everyone is looking down. Adults, teenagers, kids — all of them absorbed in a screen, disconnected from the world right in front of them and from each other.
The love for nature that used to be passed down naturally — through afternoons at the pond, through catching crawdads, through watching something small and alive and fascinating — is fading. And with it, something irreplaceable between parents and their children.
Screen time gives kids a dopamine hit. But so does finding a minnow. So does watching a guppy give birth. So does building a tiny living world and caring for it every single day. The difference is one of those things builds a human being.
“My dad didn’t teach me about nature by sitting me down for a lesson. He taught me by taking me to the pond.”Kyle Pepera — Co-Founder, ariasol
A dad, a son, and a neighborhood pond.
Growing up, my dad Ken and my grandfather took me to the pond constantly. Not because they planned it. Not because it was educational. Just because that’s what we did. We grabbed nets and jars and headed outside, and my mom would come just to be in the fresh air with us.
We caught tadpoles. We found crawdads under rocks. We watched minnows dart away in clouds of silt. We held snails and argued about what they ate. None of it was structured. All of it was magic.
That time at the pond bonded us at a level that video games never could have. There’s something about fresh air and living creatures and shared discovery that goes deeper than any screen. It heals something. It connects something. We didn’t have a word for it then. Now we do.
That love for the water eventually found its way into our home. First one tank. Then another. Watching guppies breed for the first time — tiny babies appearing from nowhere, darting between the plants — was one of the most genuinely exciting moments of my life. Not because it was rare. Because we built the world those babies were born into. Together.
ariasol is our way of giving that to every family. Not just ours.
A father, a son, and a shared obsession.
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Ken is the one who started the pond trips. A lifelong lover of nature who believed the best thing you could give a kid wasn’t a toy — it was an afternoon outside with nowhere to be. He’s been keeping tanks for years and still gets excited every time something new is born in one.
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Kyle was the kid with the net. Now he’s the one building a brand to make sure every family gets what he got — a reason to put the screens down, get outside, and discover that the natural world is more interesting than anything on a phone. ariasol is his way of giving that back.
Three things we are fighting for.
Every child deserves to know what it feels like to hold a living creature, observe an ecosystem, and understand that the natural world is endlessly fascinating. That sense of wonder doesn’t happen on a screen.
The best moments Ken and Kyle shared were never planned. They were just afternoons. We want to give families more of those — unstructured, unhurried, and unforgettable. The kind that bond you for life.
When a child cares for a living ecosystem — feeds it, watches it, learns what it needs — they develop something no screen can teach. Patience. Empathy. The satisfaction of keeping something alive.
This is your pond moment.
Everything Ken and Kyle discovered at that neighborhood pond is waiting for your family too. It starts with one box.