Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
Rremember the days of Eagerly waiting for my brother and sister To get off the landline so you can take your turn? Racking up your parents’ phone bill just to talk to your friend for hours… God knows what? Well, it turns out those days may not be over, as many parents are reinstating landline phones in their homes to prevent their kids from developing unhealthy screentime habits and strengthen their independence.
Based in Portland, Maine, an advocacy group called Landline Kids is dedicated to “reducing screen dependency” and reviving meaningful conversation between childrenGroup helps families Install a corded landline at home and create “landline pods” – networks of homes that allow children to make pre-approved calls to each other, not texting or social media Necessary.
Another business that helped revive landline Tin Can is created by Chet Kittelson, a father of three children – ages 10, eight and five – who lives in Seattle, Washington. The idea came to her two years ago, when she and her fellow parents were organizing playdates for their kids and a funny thing happened: They were the executive assistants to eight-year-olds, deciding when, where, and how they got to spend time together. “During the conversation I realized that when we were kids, our first social network was a landline. And our kids didn’t have that social network,” he explains. Independent,
Kittelson launched its own line of “Flashback” landlines in 2024, described as “the phone of your ’80s childhood” that “usually mounted on the kitchen wall.” The phone — which is sold in pink, black and white and costs $75 — plugs into either your home Internet router or an in-wall Ethernet port.
Tin Can users can choose between two phone plans. The free plan only allows calls to other Tin Can phones or 911, while the $9.99 monthly plan lets kids call any number. In both options, only approved contacts can access Tin Can, and parents can set specific hours when the phone can be used or calls can be received.
Kittelson’s mission is to give children more independence and help them feel trusted by their parents from an early age by allowing them to organize their own play dates. They’ve seen the impact firsthand in customer feedback — including one mom who said her child’s voice initially sounded shy and tentative when recording the Tin Can Phone’s voicemail greeting. “Then over the course of a week, she noticed that her child had really found their voice and they were speaking louder and more confidently when they spoke,” he says.
Lauren Zemmer, a mother of two sons, ages eight and five, has had a Tin Can landline since last year. She found the landline after talking to other moms about their shared parenting realization: They weren’t going to allow their kids to have cell phones before eighth grade, but they still wanted them to be able to communicate with each other remotely.
Zemmer says that with landlines, her kids find value in boredom, because it forces them to entertain themselves during play dates. For example, her eight-year-old recently said that he wants to make sure that when his two friends come over they bring their Pokemon cards. “He calls his friend on the tin can phone and they have a conversation about his plans,” she explains. “So this mom wasn’t managing the kids’ stuff. It was the kids managing their own stuff. It’s freedom. It’s autonomy. It’s pro-social communication.”
While Zemmer sees her kids taking responsibility and listening because of the landline, that doesn’t mean they don’t keep an eye on their cellphones. She and her fellow moms are always talking about how much time kids should spend on iPads, keeping them away from technology they don’t need, like smart watches, and keeping them off social media.
a recent census from common sense The media revealed that in 2024, children aged zero to eight spend approximately two and a half hours a day watching screens. By the age of two, four out of 10 children have their own tablet. Meanwhile, one in four children already had a cellphone by the age of eight.
Even without the filter of texting, conversations feel more real — something Kittleson remembered when her 10-year-old daughter got in touch with a friend on a landline. After changing schools last year, the two girls talked twice a day for two weeks. “I don’t know if they would be able to recognize it, but they had each other’s comfort zones. They were able to do that through the tin can,” he says. “When they’re in this place where they’re a little uncomfortable, they’re meeting new people and don’t feel at home. They were able to follow each other and connect through that experience.”
Obviously, both 10-year-olds could have called each other on their iPhone 17s, but with the distractions of modern technology, it seems unlikely they would have spent that much time talking without resorting to texting or social media. “It’s a really good example to me of her being able to connect with her friend about an important event happening in their life without it being organized by us or social media,” Kittelson says. “We call Tin Can a social network because a lot of the exchanges that happen online still happen through landlines. It’s just not performative.”
There are potential benefits to using a landline for parents, too. Zemmer says having her tin can has helped her connect with other parents. During a recent playdate, he and another father used their landlines to coordinate plans. What started as a babysitting arrangement soon turned into an impromptu family dinner with both families together. “I feel like Tin Can has made my friendships better. The kids are pulling the neighbors in, and then I’m like, ‘Okay, I’m already cooking for them. You can stop by, too,'” she says. “I feel like my relationships with my neighbors are so much stronger and deeper.”
Of course, Zemmer and Kittelson are both aware of the fact that their kids will eventually need cellphones, and once their kids turn 15, they’ll have conversations about that and social media. However, this does not mean that they will get rid of their landlines any time soon.
“Sometimes families have a phone in the kitchen. Or if you’re going somewhere, you can take the family cellphone and go out,” Zemmer says. “In that respect, the equivalent of the tin can will still exist. As long as I can have some kind of guardrails about when the phone rings and who’s calling, I think it will be an integral part of our lives.”