alt Hacker NewsA year ago, I got my 8 y/o a landline (we used Ooma). It has been absolutely wonderful.
By far the best thing is that he makes his own playdates. I'm not the middleman anymore. He just makes plans and asks me if it's ok. And if his friend doesn't have a landline, I let him call their parent. It surprises them, but when he leaves a message, they love it. He's definitely had more time with friends because of it.
Another funny thing was he complained about writing a thank you note, so we said "OK, the alternative is that you have to call them". He called them, had a nice conversation, and thanked them. Honestly, it was better than a thank you note.
It's been one of the best purchases we're made. I feel some hope this will delay the eventual begging for a smart phone because he's able to do the most critical thing, connect with friends.
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Do we think a dumb phone Nokia and calls only SIM is just as good (to avoid all the drilling etc. of installing landlines in each kids room?)
Make me really want to build one for my son when he gets to that age.
If I build it, I can control the full feature set and explain to him how it worked and he'll get the 'cool' factor too. With the raspberry pi I have lying around at home, it doesn't sound impossible!
This is a good idea. I need to start getting phone numbers from people.
My 9 and 12 year old share a "kid" phone that's just a hand-me-down parent phone. This partially meets that need, but it still gets used for way too much unsupervised YouTube time.
The thing for me that has really unlocked voice-based socializing has been the 12 year old jumping on Discord with his buddies from school. I feel like this mirrors well how I myself chat with my adult male friends—it's rarely in the context of just "a call" but rather while doing another activity. So when I see him joking around with them while they play Minecraft or whatever, that feels like it's a reasonable pattern for how to sustain friendships.