{"id":448912,"date":"2026-02-04T17:55:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T17:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/448912\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T17:55:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T17:55:09","slug":"can-tin-can-be-the-answer-to-delaying-smartphone-use-some-colorado-families-are-giving-it-a-try","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/448912\/","title":{"rendered":"Can \u2018Tin Can\u2019 be the answer to delaying smartphone use? Some Colorado families are giving it a try"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lauren Zobec compared her kids\u2019 first experience with a landline phone, a turquoise cylinder device that arrived at her east Denver home in December, to aliens learning how to talk.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were holding it way out here,\u201d said Zobec, a nurse and the mother of two boys, gesturing with her hand in front of her. \u201cThey didn\u2019t know how to talk. They didn\u2019t know how to answer it. And then when they had a phone conversation going, they didn\u2019t know what to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zobec, like thousands of other parents across the country and the globe, it turns out, is trying to delay the introduction of a cell phone to her kids for as long as possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A large and growing body of research<\/a> shows that smartphones for early adolescents have been linked to higher rates of depression, obesity and poor sleep. Early kid access to social media alone has been linked to cyberbullying and bad behavior.<\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t mean parents don\u2019t want their kids connected to their friends and family.<\/p>\n

Hence, what\u2019s old is now new again and skyrocketing in popularity across the country, particularly among parents seeking alternatives for kids.<\/p>\n

Zobec spearheaded a neighborhood landline pod that has grown to more than 100 families \u2014 all from the same elementary school. She touched a nerve.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I started texting some friends that I wanted to get a phone, and my phone started blowing up from people I didn\u2019t even know saying, oh I want in on this, I want in on this,\u201d she said. \u201cClearly, people were looking for something.\u201d<\/p>\n

The founder of Tin Can<\/a>, a landline phone company, went through a similar thing 14 months ago.<\/p>\n

Chet Kittleson and a few friends had an idea to introduce landlines \u2014 well, landline phones connected by cords using the Internet \u2014 to kids around his Seattle neighborhood.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t know it at the time, but Kittleson was prototyping something that was about to explode.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would go to a house, I would set it up, I would meet the parents and I would tell them how it all works,\u201d he said. \u201cOftentimes, when I was doing the install at a house, by the time I left, I would have five or six text messages from other people, and they\u2019d say, \u2018Hey, how can I get one of these?\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s his company\u2019s founding story.\u00a0 A little more than a year later, Kittelson said, Tin Can\u2019s growth \u2014 in actual call volume \u2014 is \u201c100 times\u201d bigger now than it was in December, with a burgeoning backorder list and demand from people in all 50 states and across the world.<\/p>\n

The company is now taking orders to have phones delivered in the late spring.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we were kids, our first social network was the landline. They (kids now) don\u2019t have that,\u201d said Kittleson, 38, and a father of three. \u201cWe’re actively more aware of some of the challenges of cell phones and the Internet in the pocket of a kid. And so we’re pushing that age back, and the more we do it, the more we create this sort of new problem where, okay, great, you don’t have a cell phone, but now you have nothing and that’s not good either. Now you feel isolated, and you’re not learning how to use your voice and all of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AAllison Sherry\/CPR NewsJules uses a Tin Can landline at home. Jan. 11, 2026.<\/p>\n

Plus, it\u2019s a common gripe from parents, Kittleson said, that they get sick of being their kids\u2019 executive assistants.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Arranging playdates, texting parents and organizing summer camps is exhausting. The ability for a kid to hop on the phone with another kid and ask them to hang out is liberating for parents, Kittleson said.<\/p>\n

In these early weeks with a landline for both of her kids, Zobec agreed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s sweet that they\u2019re having these connections and they\u2019re feeling the independence,\u201d she said. \u201cJake, when he first got it, was calling all of his friends and a couple of times they set up playdates \u2026 where like 10 of them would show up and play soccer. And that\u2019s exactly what we wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where did landlines go, anyway?<\/p>\n

The departure of the landline started when people started buying cell phones in the early 2000s, and in 2007, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services started putting out reports on the percentages of American homes that lived with cell phone connections only.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A 2024 report<\/a>, which technically was looking at the last half of 2023\u2019s numbers, found 76 percent of American adults and 87 percent of American children lived in wireless-only households. Between 30-44 year-olds, that number was roughly 90 percent.<\/p>\n

The precipitous ditching of the landline was so swift that there aren\u2019t many official advocates for them left in the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even many new homes aren\u2019t equipped with the old copper wiring to have a landline jack, Kittleson said. A few lobbying groups, including the AARP<\/a>, advocate for safety and access for vulnerable people in emergency situations, like the Los Angeles fires, and how landlines can be more reliable than an overloaded (or burned down) cell phone tower.<\/p>\n

Even USTelecom, a broadband lobbying group based in Washington, D.C., didn\u2019t have much to say about the trend of shifting from mobile to landlines among parents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNo matter how people connect, what matters is that they have the best, most reliable, and most secure networks in the world to make that connection,\u201d said Daniel Henderson, a spokesman for USTelecom. \u201cUnlike the copper-based landlines from the 1900s, most landlines today are running on modern, IP-based networks, which means they\u2019re more secure and have the added benefit of stronger protection from things like illegal scams and robocalls.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Phones for a new generation <\/p>\n

The Tin Can company caters to kids. Its multi-colored plastic phones, some in the shape of a tin can, come with phone numbers, but require adults to approve the numbers that can call and be called. Once the device is purchased, kids can call other kids with a Tin Can, as long as they\u2019re approved, for free. For $10 a month, kids can call any number, including grandma, their parents\u2019 cell phones or the fire department, but those numbers, too, have to be approved by the grown-up in the Tin Can app. Anyone can call 9-1-1 with or without a monthly subscription.<\/p>\n

Kittleson said they designed it this way to thwart spammers or marketing people from reaching kids.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople identified there was a real problem with the way that our kids are being raised right now, and we need a solution. And I think that this Tin Can style phone is currently being seen as one of the great things that you can say yes to,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it\u2019s why we caught fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kittleson\u2019s grand experiment hasn\u2019t been without bumps. There were so many Tin Can phones that went online, literally, on Christmas Day that the call volume jumped 100 times from even the day before. And even though Kittleson hired support staff and prepared for it as much as they could, there were outages across the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He was opening presents with his family, and his phone went off, and he had to launch into software crisis management.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sarah Sing, a Seattle mom of a 3rd grader, lives on a boat with her daughter and got a Tin Can phone that she\u2019s able to carry around when they travel. During the holiday break, they brought the phone out of state to visit relatives and it allowed her daughter to continue to connect with friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy kid\u2019s in third grade, and she was asking for a phone this year,\u201d Sing said. \u201cIt gives them a feel of how we grew up as kids. Really, it\u2019s about keeping my daughter away from social media.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AAllison Sherry\/CPR NewsJake uses a Tin Can landline at home. Jan. 14, 2026.<\/p>\n

Dr. Benjamin Mullin, a child psychiatrist at Children\u2019s Hospital of Colorado who specializes in child anxiety, said he\u2019s seen a surge in interest from parents about landlines in attempts to bolster friend and family connections for kids that studies show can directly thwart anxiety caused from too much time on the Internet.<\/p>\n

Data show that anxiety among kids really spiked between 2019 and 2021 \u2014 during the COVID-19 pandemic. But Mullin points out that, perplexingly, those anxiety rates haven\u2019t come down as the world has returned to normal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnecdotally, running an anxiety program here at a large children\u2019s hospital, the anxiety is more frequent and the severity of it is more intense than it was 10 years ago,\u201d Mullin said. \u201cIf I had to guess, it was the social isolation, the lack of daily interactions, that help people feel comfortable and happier and less focused on the things that aren\u2019t right in their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mullin said specifically, there is data correlated directly with the amount of time young people spend on devices with their levels of anxiety, depression and behavior problems. The more time they\u2019re on screens, the less life-satisfaction they have and the worse they function in school and in their social lives, he said.<\/p>\n

Mullin said the lack of social experience and interaction in the younger years can linger like a hangover into the young adult ones.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like they often really struggle with how you even navigate the basic aspects of social interaction, how you start a conversation with someone you don\u2019t know, how you end a conversation effectively,\u201d he said. \u201cNot to mention how you navigate day-to-day conflict with your peers, your friends. I think all of those things are harder when you haven\u2019t had to practice them when your brain is really developing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rosanna Breaux, a psychologist at Virginia Tech who specializes in children and adolescents, said that cell phones and social media, inherently, aren\u2019t all bad for all kids. For some who feel particularly marginalized or lonely, they can find community, even if it\u2019s not local.<\/p>\n

But she noted it should be controlled and monitored, so that once those kids grow up, they can thrive.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see this clinically all of the time, from a social standpoint, a lot of the basic social skills are really lagging behind, those soft skills that end up being needed for occupational success, relationship success,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Breaux also said there are new data showing that even infants, when they see their parents on a screen, perceive it negatively because of the lack of engagement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the resting scroll face,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

A replacement for smartphones, for now<\/p>\n

I\u2019m in the east Denver pod of parents embarking on the Tin Can experiment. My kids, 6 and 9, have consistently used the phone most days since Christmas break. The older one is more adept already, but even the younger one will call his grandparents and loves to pick up the yellow cylinder when it rings \u2014 even if it does violently get jerked out of his hand by his older sister.<\/p>\n

They are learning etiquette. They are learning how to ask questions and how to answer, how to wait for the social cue when someone needs to hang up and the niceties of saying goodbye \u2014 particularly to an adult.<\/p>\n

Among the perks of listening to their real analog conversations is how they come up with things to say, without the wretched distractions of a FaceTime call, which can devolve into trying to make a grandparent\u2019s face into an emoji or one of the kids amplifying the screen and staring at themselves in slackjawed wonder while grandpa is talking.<\/p>\n

At the Wiseman house in east Denver, the kids\u2019 phone is surrounded by piles of books and toys and games. The two boys, Miles and Jules, have numbers written out in scratchy kid scrawl and they have to take turns with the landline.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The father, Jordan Wiseman, whose inside sales job requires him to be on the phone all day long, said it\u2019s kind of like watching baby giraffes learn how to walk.<\/p>\n

Zobec is worried about the longer game. She wants this to be an actual replacement for a smartphone for as long as possible. She hopes other neighborhood parents, especially her kids\u2019 friends\u2019 parents, wait until the teenage years to introduce smartphones \u2014 and especially social media \u2014 to kids.<\/p>\n

She hopes the landlines aren\u2019t a blip, like a toy kids get for Christmas and then are sick of by the summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of us know the research, we know how detrimental cell phones can be and I think we can hopefully push it off until 16 and that\u2019s the recommendation,\u201d she said. \u201cBut it takes all of us because as soon as one person gets one, then it\u2019s ‘mom, everyone has a phone.\u2019 We need to stick together as parents.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lauren Zobec compared her kids\u2019 first experience with a landline phone, a turquoise cylinder device that arrived at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9045,1840,2754,165,3053,74,210617],"class_list":{"0":"post-448912","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-colorado-news","9":"tag-denver","10":"tag-depression","11":"tag-mobile","12":"tag-smartphones","13":"tag-technology","14":"tag-teens-under-stress"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}