Courtesy of the author
Forget iPhones and smartwatches — my 10-year-old’s first phone is latched to my office wall.
A button-style landline with a curly cord that can barely stretch to the hallway is the antithesis of modern convenience, yet he loves it.
To him, the phone feels like a portal to independence: dialing friends, answering with a cheerful “hello,” even learning the patience of a busy signal. For me, it’s a radical kind of parenting experiment — a reminder that communication doesn’t have to come with apps, alerts, or endless distractions.
Sometimes a phone that can’t leave the room is exactly the freedom a kid needs.
I don’t want to manage his social life
I’ll admit it, I was influenced. After being served one too many Instagram ads for the Tin Can — a Seattle startup hawking these so-called “dumb phones” — I caved.
It didn’t take much. Being married to a high school teacher means I’ve had a front-row seat to the wreckage smartphones leave in adolescent brains. My husband’s greatest hits include kids standing shoulder to shoulder in hallways, eyes glazed, typing away at each other instead of speaking. Add in the horror stories of online bullying, and I was sold. I made it through my entire school career without a smartphone; surely my son can too.
But here’s the other truth: I’m exhausted from being his social consigliere, the constant go-between who manages every sport-related text, every plan, every “can I call so-and-so?” By the time I was my son’s age, I was not only using our family phone independently, but my parents had ingrained an entire script in my mind so as to answer appropriately: “Labberton’s residence, this is Kinsey speaking.”
My kid, on the other hand? With only the occasional experience of being passed a phone once the adults have handled the pleasantries, he’s got all the telephone etiquette of a feral cat.
He wants independence
But he craves independence. He wants the autonomy to make his own plans, and I want him to learn how to do so thoughtfully. So here we are in the “way back machine” with a device that looks exactly like what I used in 1992. And it’s working.
The first night I got his Tin Can up and running, my son was determined to call every friend he’d ever met. The problem was, dumb phones don’t come with speed dial — or saved numbers, for that matter. So we went analog with the whole experience: pen, paper, and a handwritten roster of approved contacts (yes, I literally curated his social circle). Then I plugged the numbers into the Tin Can’s companion app, which lets me control who he can and can’t call. No mystery-number prank calls happening on my watch.
Next came the bigger hurdle: what on earth to say once someone actually answered. Turns out, unlike me, my son had zero script. So there I was, suddenly channeling my own parents: Say, “Hello, this is Wells. May I please speak to Charlie?” I coached, sounding every bit like the ghost of my parents’ past.
Finally, his friend got on the line, and I realized my work here was done. Finally connected, I could merely look on with pleasure as my social butterfly caught up with one of his best buddies. Sure, they’d just hung out at school mere hours before, but the novelty of being able to catch up after hours on their own was intoxicating.
He started organizing his own playdates
A few days later, my son descended the stairs with great authority, informing me that he’d taken the liberty of inviting a friend over. The playdate, he added matter-of-factly, would commence within the hour.
Though slightly inconvenienced by the last-minute rendezvous, I bit my tongue. This was exactly what I’d hoped for. His excitement over the get-together he’d arranged pulled me back to my own childhood, when all that stood between me and a friend was a dial tone.
That’s what I want him to reach for when life gets hard or when he has joy to share. Not the flat, emoji-laden wasteland of digital chatter, shallow and distracting memes, or toxic online forums, but the breathless thrill of a friend’s voice on the other end.
If this stripped-down phone can help him build that habit now, then consider us proof that sometimes less really dials up to more.
The post My 10-year-old was craving independence so I got him a landline. He’s already organizing his own playdates. appeared first on Business Insider.
