SEATTLE: 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 neighbours 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.
“Our neighbour was like: ‘Everybody, text him right now, we’re all going to get them,’” Zemer says, and within days, they were among the first parents to acquire an early model of what has now become a virally popular phone for kids - the Tin Can, a Wifi-enabled, curly-corded landline that allows parents to control the hours when it is in use and which phone numbers are approved to call in to (or be called from) the closed network.
In the year since then, Zemer says, the Tin Can has been transformative for her children, ages 5 and 8. Her 8-year-old son has autonomy to call his friends when he wants to talk; the neighborhood kids often work out their own playdates, without their parents having to text one another. The landline has also been a boon for the children’s relationship with their grandparents, Zemer says: They used to video-chat over FaceTime, but “the kids would get so distracted by the screen and the emojis they could drop in, and how they could change their face or turn into a unicorn,” she says. “Now they have thoughtful, nuanced conversations.” A rising number of parents are worried about what that level of exposure means for their kids. Many have sought other options, like “dumb phones” or smartwatches, or signing the “Wait Until 8th” pledge to withhold smartphones until the end of 8th grade.
Tin Can co-founder and CEO Chet Kittleson, a Seattle father of three, says the idea for the reinvented landline first came to him in 2022 at after-school pickup. A group of parents were chatting and scheduling playdates, he recalls, and one mom joked that she felt like her daughter’s executive assistant. “So I said, ‘remember when were growing up, and our social network was the landline?’” he says. They all laughed, but Kittleson found himself holding on to the idea of a landline phone with parental controls.
Kittleson remembers how thrilled his then-9-year-old daughter was the first time she heard the prototype ring: “It was the first time she’d ever heard an analog phone ring,” he says. Within a week or so, Kittleson and his two co-founders were dropping off phones at friends’ houses. He told those friends to let him know whether other parents were interested - and soon he was bombarded with text messages from other families who wanted one of these phones.
“We saw a very natural virality. Within a couple of days I had dozens of text messages from parents around west Seattle, asking ‘Can I get one?’” he says. “The kids lost their minds. They were so excited when the phone rang, they would jump over the couch to see who it was. The no-caller-ID thing was surprisingly magical - you always knew it was someone you wanted to talk to, it’s an approved contact, but you didn’t know who it was.” In the past year, he says, the company has sold “tens of thousands” of the phones to households in all 50 states and Canada; they’re currently back-ordered, with deliveries expected by December.
