Parents Are Giving Their Kids Landline Phones: What It Offers.

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Recently, I spoke with Ava, a fifth grader from Indiana.

On a real phone — her father recently installed a landline phone so his daughter could communicate. She spoke to me while holding the receiver in her hand, sitting in the hallway upstairs in their house. “I hold it to my ear, and it's plugged into the base,” she noted, an explanation that would have been redundant a couple of decades ago, but now seems entirely understandable.

Unlike a FaceTime call, “I only hear sound, not the person I can see,” she said. The quality of sound was, leaving behind a lot of modern technology.

Ava's father, newspaper publisher Chris Hardy, decided to buy the phone in spring as an alternative to the mobile. “Access to social media and the social experiences they bring can impact life in different ways,” Hardy told me. “We want to postpone that moment for as long as we can.”

Hardy is one of an increasing number of parents turning back to landline phones for their children. Tin Can, which launched its own landline phones for kids, already has customers across the country, as well as in Canada, company co-founder Chet Kittleson told me.

I understand why parents choose landline phones: it's an opportunity for children to communicate with friends and family without the social and psychological challenges that come with smartphones. “I wanted to offer parents something they can always accept,” Kittleson noted.

No Pressure from Modern Technology

Concerns about the impact of smartphones on children have risen in recent years, especially following the release of Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation in 2024. It argues that these devices hinder children's social and psychological development. Researchers have yet to clearly demonstrate a connection between social media use and mental health issues, but 45% of teenagers feel they spend too much time on social media. Parents and educators are increasingly trying to give children more time away from phones.

This desire has led to initiatives like Wait Until 8th, where families pledge not to buy smartphones for their children until after eighth grade. The idea is that by banding together, children without smartphones won't feel left out. Other parents choose smartwatches or flip phones to provide communication without all the features of more advanced devices.

The landline phone could be the next step in this process: The Atlantic recently characterized it as the “dumbest phone.” “There are no apps, ads, or games here,” Kittleson says. “There’s only connection to another person.”

The Tin Can phone, which looks like a regular landline, costs $75 and connects to a router or Ethernet port (a Wi-Fi model will be available soon). But some parents are opting for simpler options. For example, Hardy bought “the cheapest flip phone he could find” on Amazon for $14.

He was looking for a clear phone that he had as a child, but noted that prices for such devices online have significantly risen, possibly due to nostalgia.

The phone has become a “promising experiment” for Ava, Hardy recounts. “When it rings, she can hear it from anywhere in the house,” he says. “She drops everything and rushes to answer.”

Receiving a call on a landline does create a different sensation than seeing a name on a smartphone. “When it rings, I feel excited and a bit nervous because I don’t know who’s calling,” Ava shares.

Hardy has set the phone so that only known numbers can call, so Ava writes her friends’ numbers down on scraps of paper.

“I’m glad they can call me, but it’s a bit inconvenient,” Ava says about the process. Asking someone for their number like that is “not something I would do if I had a smartphone.”

Benefits of an Old-Fashioned Landline Phone

Parents and experts praise landline phones for their potential in developing children’s communication skills. “A landline phone allows the child to focus only on the conversation and imagination, and also on what they want to say,” notes Suda Swaminathan, director of the Early Childhood Education Center.

“Listening to how she learns to maintain a phone conversation, I hit my goal,” Hardy says about Ava. “It’s a very important skill.”

The true impact of smartphones on children continues to spark much discussion. For example, my colleague Adam Clark Estes wrote that smartphones could be given to children as young as 3, provided there are limitations. It remains unknown whether landline phones or other efforts to keep children off mobile devices will improve social skills or mental health in the future.

But for children, part of the enjoyment of a landline phone may be simply and clearly. When Kittleson set up the phone in his home, even before it was functional, his children “just kept playing with it,” he says. The device’s appeal is in its “tactile sensations,” he adds. “Pushing the buttons, feeling how they press down.”

My children also often play with our old landline phone, even though it’s not plugged in. When I was growing up, my brother loved phone cords so much that our parents bought him one — just the cord.

“I can’t tell you how many cords I was sent” during the development of Tin Can, Kittleson recalls. “I played with the color and texture, how they spring.”

Smartphones perform many functions, but they do not provide the same experience as landline phones, which satisfy the desire for more practical sensations that adults have enjoyed for many years. They are also part of a larger trend toward retro technologies among young Americans — BlackBerries, photo albums, cassette tapes are becoming popular again as Generation Z consumers yearn for an analog past. Kat Zhang recently wrote about this topic in The Cut, sharing her pleasure in having an old-fashioned phone in her apartment.

Kids are also interested in technological nostalgia. Experts say they are always curious about toys that mimic the past. They may not have witnessed the era of landline phones, but that doesn’t stop them from playing with “kitchen sets” that mimic cooking over an open flame, popular among toddlers, Swaminathan noted.

These sets are typically very appealing to children who are naturally curious and want to explore something new, even if the technologies are actually quite old.

Ava particularly says that her friends “think it’s really cool that I have a landline,” since “they think it’s a bit old-fashioned.”

While she really wants her phone to be able to send messages since friends talk about group chat. But while she will want a smartphone in the future, for now, she’s quite satisfied.

However, there is one type of phone she wants. “There’s one type of phone that has a rotary dial,” she told me. “I think that would be pretty cool.”

What I’m Reading

It’s more “what I’m writing,” but I’m also a novelist, and my next book Bog Queen is coming out on October 14. It's a literary mystery where the victim is a 2000-year-old bog body. Although it's not entirely related to kids, there’s a teenager who plays a key role! You can preorder here.

The classic TV show Reading Rainbow is returning as a digital series on YouTube with librarian and popular TikTok character Michael Treitz at the helm.

Schools are cutting nutrition and health programs due to the “massive law” from President Donald Trump that eliminates SNAP funding for education. One nonprofit leader called it “a catastrophic situation for public health.”

My oldest child recently finished Oddity Woods, a graphic novel about a girl searching for her father in a world of ghosts and monsters. (We also really love the author Kay Davault’s previous book Misfit Mansion.)

From My Mailbox

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the decline in teenagers working as babysitters. One reader shared that babysitting helped her discover her skills and even defined her career. “As a child of the 1960s, my learning difficulties were never recognized,” she wrote, adding that babysitting helped her develop skills. “If I had not babysat from ages 13 to 16, I might not have found my calling!”

Thank you to everyone who wrote, and you can always reach me at [email protected].