12 Families Who Got Their Kids a Landline: 5-Year-Olds Booking Play Dates, a Snow Day Planned Without Parents and a Closet Phone Booth

A bunch of our neighbors and friends have one and our kids arrange play dates all the time even at 5 years old! They use it to call grandparents and even my wife and I at work, which is the best part of my day. Plus you get a fixed “landline” for emergencies or when your partner isn’t picking up their phone lol.

There is a bit of a collective action hurdle, meaning you have to encourage your neighbors and friends to also get one for it to really take hold, but I was also surprised by how many of my kid’s friends already had one or were thinking of getting one. Then as soon as one family gets one, the dominos fall.

Instead of cell phones, we’re getting a landline for my big kids to use at home.

8-year-old: “Can we buy like a little notepad where we can write down phone numbers?”

Me: “Sure, I can get you a phone book.”

8-year-old: “I don’t know what that is”

The current plan is just one line! And I have 4 kids, so...

I’m glad to be parenting in this era, and not in the one right before this where they had to blaze the trail with their kids

“Two siblings learned that a shopping trip for new phones was actually to buy the old-fashioned kind, a landline phone. Their mother, Courtney, made the unconventional call. Courtney says the landline phones still allow her kids to have plenty of conversations with friends. The family is part of a new trend where parents say ‘no’ to cell phones.”

I got my kids a landline. Schools are closed today because of the snow. Our phone has been ringing non-stop and I cannot tell you the joy it gives me. My kids are making plans with their friends to go out and play, independently, like in the 90s.

“NBC News’ Rehema Ellis reports on the family in Maine that fended off the lure of smartphones by installing an old-fashioned landline for their kids to talk to friends. Now other families are joining in as South Portland’s landline pod is growing.”

The trend: The South Portland family started with one corded phone for two daughters instead of a first smartphone, as both NBC News and Maine Public reported in 2025. According to NBC, other families nearby then got landlines too, so the kids would have someone to call.

“My daughter broke her phone, so I got us a landline. She was mad but I’m kind of excited!”

Lol I told her, “it’ll be active next week. Here’s the home phone number. Give it to your friends and y’all can talk that way.” Lol she was very displeased. I want her to experience what we did. Texting sucks. Giggle with your friends and try to sneak the phone into your room after bedtime. Be a kid!

We are spending a couple days in a mountain cabin, and my kids were MOST excited to discover the corded landline telephone hanging on the wall by the kitchen. I had to explain what a dial tone is.

BEHOLD. A relic.

“The disappearance of landlines has ruined an aspect of childhood social interactions and put a new responsibility on parents.”

My wife actually had this insight, so credit where it’s due.

When we were kids, we had landlines. Even from a young age, you could take the phone, call your friend’s house, ask to speak to them, ask to hang out, arrange for plans on when, where, how, etc.

NOW that all falls on us as parents. “Can you call Kevin’s dad and see if we can have a playdate?” etc. etc. They don’t have to do any of the planning, none of the talking, none of the awkwardness. They don’t learn to be polite on the phone and how to talk and for how long and to who.

Just seems like another thing that’s kind of shifted with the rise of smart phones.

We have students at my school who have no idea how to talk on a landline. They call home to speak to parents and we have to coach them on how to hold the receiver and where to direct their voice when they speak.

As a teenager, my parents turned our hall closet into a phone booth for my sister and I. It was the coolest thing and I can’t count how many times my friends would jam themselves in there. We even got our own phone line so we knew if someone was calling it was for us. It was a surprisingly cool thing for my parents to do.

I would love it if my kids could call their friends and make their own plans, rather than me needing to facilitate it all. We have a home phone, but no one else does.

“Bring back the home phone so children can make phone calls....”

When I was a kid in the 80’s, everyone had a home phone and kids would call each other. We had a list of family and friends’ numbers next to the phone.

I feel that is part of why kids start asking for phones so young is because they have no way to contact their friends & family without asking to use their parent’s cellphone. My brother had a home phone all along and my nephew would call me and other family members from it often starting when he was as young as 5 years old......

Elementary school age we were phoning our friends to make plans to go to each others houses. In junior high we were calling each other to meet up on our bikes in the neighborhood. In high school we would call each other to decide where we are meeting up to go out or hang at one person’s house.

The home phone by definition belongs to the household and not to any individual.

Home phone culture also fostered social skills because when you called someone’s house, you had to say hello to whoever answered and ask for the person you are calling for. You may even end up talking for a minute with the mom or the brother or sister of whomever you were calling before they passed the phone on to the person you called for.