{"id":397632,"date":"2026-04-17T21:27:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T21:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/397632\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T21:27:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T21:27:12","slug":"parents-use-landlines-to-delay-smartphones-for-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/397632\/","title":{"rendered":"Parents use landlines to delay smartphones for kids"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story originally aired on CPR News.<\/a><\/p>\n

When Lauren Zobec decided to get her two young sons a plastic turquoise landline telephone, she had no idea how slow they would be to understand it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were like aliens when they first got it \u2014 they were holding it out to here. And I think they were so used to FaceTime that they don\u2019t know when you answer the phone, you have to say, \u2018Hi Winston, this is Zach,\u2019\u201d Zobec said. <\/p>\n

Their phone is called a Tin Can<\/a>, and it\u2019s one of a few companies trying to bring back the landline. Founder Chet Kittleson discovered an almost insatiable demand a little more than a year ago in his Seattle neighborhood.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would go into a house, set it up, I\u2019d meet them, tell them how it works,\u201d Kittleson said. \u201cAnd oftentimes when I was at a parent\u2019s house, by the time I\u2019d left, I would have five to six text messages from their friends saying, ‘How can I get one?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Tin Can phones connect via the internet and are only able to call or receive calls from numbers designated by an adult.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re actively more aware of some of the challenges of cell phones, so we are pushing that age back, and the more we do it, we are creat[ing] a new problem,\u201d Kittleson said. \u201c\u2018OK, great you don\u2019t have a cell phone, but now you have nothing and that\u2019s not good either. Now, you feel isolated, and you\u2019re not learning how to use your voice.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Tin Can says its call volume is up more than 100 times what it was in December. <\/p>\n

Jules Wiseman, a second-grader in Denver, said he appreciated the newfound independence. \u201cI like that you can make like arrangements with friends for playdates,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In East Denver, roughly 100 families from the same elementary school all have a Tin Can phone.<\/p>\n

At the Wiseman home, Miles, who is 9 and Jules\u2019 older brother, is working on the art of crank calling.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Hi, would you like the $2-million-dollar meal deal? It comes with everything you can imagine.\u2019 And when they ask my name, I say \u2018Larry Stinkenstein\u2019 or something,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Dr. Yalda Uhls is a research scientist studying technology and adolescent development at the University of California, Los Angeles. Like Wiseman, she said landlines restore a sense of freedom in young kids.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the fact they\u2019re arranging their own playdates \u2026 I definitely think we coddle our children a lot and we don\u2019t feel comfortable letting them have agency and independence,\u201d Uhls said.<\/p>\n

Full disclosure: This reporter and her family have been playing around with landlines, as have many of her neighbors. The latest guidelines recommend that we wait until kids are 16 for a smartphone. <\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story originally aired on CPR News. When Lauren Zobec decided to get her two young sons a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397633,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[167709,1089,85,46,20966,188603,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-397632","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-cell-phones","9":"tag-children","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-landline","13":"tag-socializing","14":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}