Personal Review
1 min read
Parents are bringing back the landline
Looking to steer kids away from screens and social media, more families are going analog.
There were eight children among the four close-knit families in their Seattle neighborhood, and by last fall, the oldest child — who was almost 9 — had already started asking for a smartphone. But the group of parents had made a communal agreement: They would keep their children away from smartphones for as long as possible.
There was strength in that solidarity, says Lauren Zemer, a Seattle-area therapist and mom of two: “We had agreed that we were going to share these values.” But she and her neighbors also wanted their children to feel connected to their peers and to develop a sense of social independence. So in October 2024, when one of the parents heard about a local father who had built a prototype for a kid-specific, adult-controlled landline phone — and had created a waitlist for families who wanted one — Zemer and her friends were ecstatic.
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