Millions of people own cellphones, and for parents, deciding when to get kids their own phone is not easy.
One mother in Maine has found a nostalgic way to handle her young daughter’s request to have her first cell phone.
“For my birthday, I got a landline, and at first I didn’t know what a landline was,” Molly Morse said.
Molly thought it was a toy phone at first, but then her mom told her it was the real deal.
“You don’t get addicted to the screen and stuff, all you do is just put it on your ear, you don’t have to look at it,” Molly said.
And now Molly and her 8-year-old sister Piper are embracing the blast from the past, instead of yearning for cell phones.
“It’s like way more easier and funner,” Piper said.
For the past few months, Molly and Piper have been twisting their fingers in the cord, calling their loved ones.
“If we don’t get to see them a lot and we just give them a call on the landline, that can make their day,” Molly said.
Sometimes, they dial the wrong number, but it’s all part of the learning process.
“The whole point of this was to increase their independence and increase their kind of own responsibility,” their mother, Caron Morse, said.
And that’s exactly what happened.
“You can plan your own play dates and you don’t have to ask my mom to text or call the other parent,” Piper said.
Most importantly, Piper and Molly can schedule band rehearsals.
The landlines make it even easier for these young musicians to get together to rock out.
The only problem with getting Molly and Piper a landline was that their friends didn’t have them.
But their mom got a bunch of families involved. Now they have a landline pod, with about two dozen people the kids can call.
“We couldn’t do this if I didn’t have our friends and our family and our neighbors jump on board,” Morse said.
One of those neighbors is Melinda Hull, who got a landline phone for her 8-year-old daughter Carly.