In Defense of the Landline
Once one of the most ubiquitous pieces of technology on Earth, the old-fashioned phones with wired connectors are disappearing. In 2019, only about 31% of American households still had landlines, with 97% of American adults owning cell phones . But are we too hasty?
In some ways, the superiority of smartphones is obvious: you can put them in your pocket, use them to play World of Tanks, and take them out to take pictures of your lunch. But when it comes to the phone’s primary function – communicating with other people – landlines still offer advantages over cell phones, and for some people, those advantages are huge.
Until recently the sound quality was better
If I were writing this article ten years ago, I would have told you that landlines are better than mobile phones because they work even when there is a power outage, and because they run on a special voice-only system, calls are interrupted, plus the sound quality is much better than mobile phones. Unfortunately, however, the copper wires that once carried all our silly conversations have been largely replaced by fiber optic cables, so almost no one in the US enjoys the sonic clarity and self-contained cooling that POTS (plain old telephone service) once provided. service). Cellular may be better than it used to be, but strictly speaking, in terms of communicating with friends, it’s still nowhere near as good as phones in the 1950s.
Now they are cooler than smartphones
Old phones are inherently interesting and are becoming rare enough to be eccentric. Calling the avocado princess phone with a twisted cord and dialer is simply stylish . He says, “I have better things to do than stare at a black rectangle all day.” So if you are a trendy hipster, you should buy it. But landlines are most valuable to people who probably have no idea what a “twee hipster” is.
Landlines are the perfect solution for grandmothers and baristas
“There were big phone companies that took advantage of our grandmothers, and that was enough,” says James Graham, CEO of Community Phone , a company dedicated to preserving landlines for the elderly. “People get an email from their phone company saying, ‘You need to switch to VOIP and get a new phone from us. They always had this number and it’s like, “What are you doing?” This is a problem that we are solving as a company.”
Graham, who is in his early 20s, is hardly a supporter of old phones, but the tech entrepreneur notes that for memory patients, people with dementia, and people with Parkinson’s disease, the iPhone is often not an option, where an old-school landline is familiar and simple. way to keep in touch with loved ones.
Another place where the landline shines is in small businesses. Employees lose or steal cell phones, and depending on the business, knowing the location of your work phone at all times can be vital. “It’s very interesting to see how new companies understand this,” Graham said. “There is intrinsic value in the simplicity of a work phone. If you’re a barista and need to answer the phone, he’s always there.”
More pluses
Unless you’re retired or a business owner, landline phones still have a ton of benefits. From the top of my head:
- You will never lose it.
- The screen will never crack.
- You don’t have to buy a new one every two years.
- You never have to charge it.
- Nobody will steal it.
- You won’t crash your car because you’re using a landline phone.
- They’re cheaper: the average landline phone bill is about $42 a month, compared to $127 a month.
- You can buy an old phone on eBay for about $30. The iPhone costs about a thousand.
- You will not contribute to the downfall of human civilization.
Let me expand on this last point.
Smartphones could be the death of all that is good in our society
Americans spend an average of seven hours and four minutes watching a screen each day, and younger people spend more time scrolling than older people. As US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. put it, phones are such an “important part of everyday life that a visitor from Mars might think they are an important feature of the human anatomy.” All this has happened in the last decade.
No one has any idea what this rapid and almost universal change in our behavior will do to us, but we may be starting to see the signs. Since 2011, rates of depression and suicide among teenagers have risen sharply. We can’t say exactly why, but it’s pretty closely related to the rise of smartphones.
I spend too much time looking at my phone. You too. Everyone does. This is by design . Right now, a large-scale worldwide experiment on human consciousness is being carried out, and no one knows how it will end. But you don’t have to.
If you switch to a landline, I promise you won’t grab it the moment you wake up, stare at it before going to sleep, and check it a thousand times in between. You will only use it to communicate with people. That’s all it is for and all it does.
“Since we’re all just obsessed with smartphones, we’ve stopped looking back and noticing that all these other things haven’t really changed since the ’60s,” Graham said. “We are all so obsessed with looking at our black slate that we never look outside.”