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A 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.

Why does it seem like many parents are unaware that a hand me down iPhone can be heavily locked down with screen time settings? A list of things you can do:

- allowed list of apps, can reduce it to just phone, imessage, and utilities like weather app

- effectively permanent downtime, just set the end time less than start time such as 3:00 am to 2:59 am (technically 1 minute of non downtime). This blocks apps except for the allowed apps

- disable installing apps from app store

- disable adding new contacts and block calls and messages not in contact list. This allows parent to control who the phone can be used to contact

- none of these settings can be changed without the screen time pin

- also configure the phone with a minor apple account and add to your family group so you can monitor and control screen time settings from your phone.

So start with a super locked down phone that can only be used to communicate with parents. This is very helpful when they start after school sports. And the phone is so locked down they don't really have any interest in it.

Later when they're older start allowing communication with friends from school. But still only phone and imessage, no other apps. This reinforces that it's a communication device, not for endless scrolling and watching videos.

Off-topic, but I hate sites like this. All links in the article are for other pages on businessinsider.com, but there's no link to Tin Can, not that I can find at least.

It's getting more and more normal that sites won't link out of their own "property".

I was thinking of doing something like this for text with LoRa. But, having kids I don't have time to do that. This seems really great!

I read the previous discussion, oof:

S04dKHzrKT wrote

Make note of the privacy policy[1]. Some users may not like the data they collect. > Information Collected from Children: As detailed in Section 3.C, we collect voice audio during calls, call log information, and utilize the Parent-provided contact list in relation to the Child's use of the Tin Can Device. We may also collect device identifiers and technical usage data related to the Service.

[1]: https://tincan.kids/policies/privacy-policy

I just watched this great mini-documentary about a local landline system in Bellingham WA. Well worth a couple of minutes.

https://youtu.be/UhVi3smmvTs?si=ow6zw_xTKo22WpLZ

People can call each other but also businesses have 4-digit phone numbers that are shortened versions of the business name, like GUIT for the guitar shop.

> playdate

When I was a boy, there was no such word "playdate". What I'd do is just walk or ride my bike to a friend's house and knock on the door.

No parents involved.

I built a DIY system like this using Asterisk, Raspberry Pi, and a Grandstream ATA: https://github.com/cancio/rotary

I based it on the instructions provided by this Show HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39801991

Funny enough, China already ran this experiment. Kids' smartwatches started as call-only devices for safety. Then they added friend lists, status updates, like counts, popularity rankings. Little Genius now has 48% of the global kids' smartwatch market [1]. Kids delete real-life friends for not having enough likes on the watch. Once a device enters a kid's social life, there's no market incentive to keep it simple.

[1] https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3328227/move-o...

We bought a Tincan after a company parent-erg conversation led to a coworker discussing her experience with the product.

Is it the game changer we thought it would be? No. We thought my daughter would want to call her friends as much as she wants us to call their friends' parents to have them come over. We thought my son would use it as much as he texts on his gizmo.

Having said this, they are getting experience, albeit infrequent, with saying "Hello.... I love you. Goodbye."

And, yeah, when it rings, there is a mad-dash to pick it up. There is something uniquely pre cell phone ("reminds me of the 80s") about the joy and wonder of "Who could be calling me (at this hour)?"

I "made" something like this 7-8 years ago for our first kid. When I say "made" I mean I bought a "fixed wireless terminal" for $40 on eBay, a classic landline phone for $30, and a cell phone subscription for kids ($5/month). Then I connected the parts, and voila, we had a landline for kids.

Obvious benefits include low cost, full interop with all other phones, and having the kids learn our phone numbers by heart after punching them many times.

> She said she heard about the Tin Can on a Facebook group.

Nice to safe the kids from that... But who will save the adults? ^^

Yes, social media is bad for kids. You start to realize that. It only took 15 years. The thing is: It's equally bad for you...

And you prove that every minute. Whenever you say something, and after three sentences, basically every topic ends up in something related to Instatoktube.

My only hope is that what we are currently see rising is similar to what happened to alcoholism and chain smoking.

This concept has been amazing for my family and kids.

Shameless plug: I started my own service without vendor hardware lock in.

https://chatterboxphone.com

"If parents consent [...] we collect [...] serial number and battery level [...] who called and call time and length [...] and Voicemails (messages and greetings)"

If you're going to get this product, make sure you pay attention when you set it up, and opt out if you are privacy minded.

I'm a happy Tin Can customer. For young children (5 and 7 in my case) it's especially delightful to give them a measure of autonomy, at an age where they don't yet have a mobile phone. They get to call their friends and family on their own terms, without any safety or "screen time" concerns.

It's especially fun to watch them discover the very concept of a landline: the keypad (they thought it was a pin code); the dial tone; the memorizing and writing down of phone numbers.

5/5 highly recommended.

I'm glad it's a push-button phone, and not a rotary phone. There's a hilarious YouTube of today's teenagers tasked with making a phone call on a rotary phone:

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OADXNGnJok

The one on their website is now $100, not $75 as per the article.

Surely someone can build a more privacy-friendly decentralized solution?

It doesn't take much for Tin Can to start charging $50 / month for a subscription.

I did this but using Twilio, a Grandstream HT802v2, and a basic AT&T wall phone. Caller ID sorta works. I really tried to find a phone that would make a satisfying sound when slammed down, but I found that no one makes good, solid corded wallphones any longer.

The toughest part was figuring out which set of wires (my house had like 5 lines somehow) went to that particular jack in the kitchen.

We got one of these for our elementary-aged kids because it took off in our network of families at their school.

It’s so fun watching them talk to their buddies from school, planning play dates, just chitchatting etc. My favorite thing is when they prank call one another, cracks me up.

Maybe the novelty wears off soon but for at least the last month or so they’ve used it every day. It feels like it gives them a bit of autonomy they’re seeking right now at their ages, but in a relatively safe way.

Highly recommend it.

Discussion (197 points, 8 months ago, 132 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44587018

> Alarmingly, some Gen Zers don't say "hello" when they answer a phone call; they expect the caller to just start talking.

I'm an older Gen-X and I've stopped doing this unless I recognize the caller. I'm not going to give a scammer anything to build a voice print on. I also use the stock greeting for voicemail instead of a personal one.

I'm not sure if they're still available, but the PAP2T was a wonderful piece of kit - just an ethernet port and 2x RJ-45 jacks for old style phones. You can set up custom dial plans and use any VOIP SIP provider you like. You can trivially edit the dial plan to restrict certain number prefixes, and set up custom short numbers - so for instance my "landline" had 81 for my mum, 82 for brother, 83 for sister, etc. but you could also just dial regular numbers.

If you run an asterisk server on your own box, you could easily set up a private SIP network just for you and your kids, or your kids and their friends, etc. and either run a SIP client on your mobile for your use and a VOIP SIP gateway if you want your kid to be able to call a friend's mobile.

EDIT: I just looked and the PAP2T has been discontinued, but there seem to be lots of units available new from China that look identical and are sold as Linksys PAP2T, and some unbranded units that look the same but with blank labels. I've no idea if these are fully compatible with the real PAP2T, but they might still be worth trying.

For the nerdy who might want to set up their own similar system for their kids, and let their kids pick any landline phone they want, you can get an ATA (Analog Telephone Adapter) on eBay for cheap, then connect it to a Raspberry Pi with Asterisk, and any VOIP provider, to make your own PBX. (https://www.littlebytesofpi.com/raspberrypihomephone/)

Fun product, but not for me. We've given the kids old iPhones when they reached the age of 12 and they have been known we can check anything and everything on their phone. Each and every email is cc'ed to us and we log what we can (not that we actually do that much).

We have also told the kids we are not 24/7 actively monitoring them, because we woud like to trust them. Unless we think there's an issue they cannot, will not or are forced not to tell us, we will not intervene with their phone usually. They know we can track their phones anywhere on this planet and they don't care, because we are not acting as helicopter parents.

This has built trust between our kids and us parents. It forces us as parents to start trusting the kids and the kids get the freedom they want and need.

Is it 100% perfect? No, not by a long shot. It's a balance that may be scary for parents. We talk with them about stuff like doomscrolling, social media drama and privacy. They show us memes, tell us about their school life and usually do not care if we happen to see some private conversation on the corner of our eye.

Do the kids make mistakes? You bet. That's part of their life. Do we as parents make mistakes? Absolutely. None of the kids came with a manual. :)

If you live in Germany and have a Fritz!Box router, you can just buy a second old-ish Fritz!Box and a simple landline phone (from the likes of eBay, Kleinanzeigen...) and hook them up via WiFi.

Voilà, telephone service as it used to be. No proprietary payphone with questionable ToS and privacy policies needed.

Just got our Tin Can a few weeks ago. The hardware is "eh", but the service is pretty great. The ability to approve incoming/outgoing numbers before being able to call/receive calls is very handy to cut out any spam calls that you'd get with a normal land line.

Seems like there are a bunch of alternatives popping up including some DIY solutions. Which is really awesome in this space. Check out https://www.beanstalk.club/ I've done some work with these folks. I love their bring-your-own-phone approach. There are so many cool old-school phones out there, even on ebay. We've also seen lots of success with Beanstalk and a simple $20 cordless phone. Kids love wandering around chit-chatting. There's also a ton of momentum around the https://www.waituntil8th.org/ pledge.

We actually have one of these between our group of friends and their kids and it's awesome. The kids call each other to chat and setup play dates or to go run around in the street. Our kids will call back home to let us know they made it to the other persons house, or let us know they're coming back home too.

The tactility is incredible, and it's so just so cute to watch them chat away (5 year olds!)

I am working on a similar project. I have something working for my own needs and a few other families already but a long road to go before making something GA.

You can waitlist at https://havenphone.com if you are interested.

There were three major things I wanted to do differently from Tin Can:

- I wanted to use off the shelf VOIP hardware so if the company ever went out of business I (and any of my users) had an escape valve or could just sell the hardware.

- I wanted to have a code base I could open source. (not open source, yet!)

- I wanted flexibility to offer ATAs (devices that let you connect any ol' "analog" phone)- some of my parent friends wanted cordless "DACT" phones, interestingly.

It has been quite an adventure entering the world of VOIP.

The SIP protocol has so many esoteric options (understandably given its history!) it could make TLS look simple.

My most recent learning is this crazy protocol called TR-069 that ISPs use to configure endpoint hardware like home routers, cable modems, and VOIP phones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TR-069

Also, interestingly every cheap (sub-$50) phone and ATA I have tried has a built-in OpenVPN clients.

Oh, and one more interesting thing Grandstream ATAs are able to be taken over by the Grandstream cloud service by just providing the ATA serial number and mac address on the back of the device- I did not love that workflow when considering long-term security. (:

If you have $50 and some time to kill you can do it all yourself right now. In voip.ms you can use the phone book and the caller id filter to create a "*" hang-up rule and an "allow phone book" rule.

- https://major.io/p/85-cents-home-phone/

- https://www.voipsupply.com/fanvil-h3w-wifi-hotel-ip-phone-wh...

- https://www.voipsupply.com/fanvil-h2u-black-hotel-phone-v2

- https://www.voipsupply.com/grandstream-ht801-v2-ata

Did this exact thing for my four and six-year-old kids. I used an Ooma Telo Air[1] (Free + ~$6/mo in taxes and fees) and an old vTech landline phone. It's been highly successful in our house. The kids have (monitored) independence to call grandparents and aunts/uncles. Watching them translate written down 10-digit phone numbers into button presses is fun too.

1. https://www.ooma.com/home-phone-service/basic/

For three or four endpoints all within the home, you could do this with just ATAs and not even need a SIP server. Many ATAs have a configurable "dial plan" that will let you map a number to an IP address, thus giving you the ability to call the other terminals directly within the LAN.

We have a voip system for the house, mainly because its one floor too tall to shout up and easily be heard.

Each of the kids has a really old cisco voip phone (I got 8 for £35).

There is a quick dial menu which connects too the loft, kid1, kid2, shed, living room. I also have an extension for my mobile.

That works for keeping everyone in touch and save a lot of "WHAT DID YOU SAY?".

I got two DECT cordless phones for my house and tried to set up RustPBX on a raspberry pi. But I got snagged because it wasn’t playing nicely with flowroute, and I didn’t want to burden the project with my complaint. I guess I’ll end up using FreePBX but it sucks because RustPBX really looked promising.

Wonderful idea. The kid can call their friend "Let's meet outside". Then they go outside and (must) leave the phone at home. They use the phone to organize no-phone time together. Might be good for adults too.

For instance my boss couldn't call me while I'm out and about. What you expect me to carry my landline with me?

I like the idea. We tried with licence free walkie talkies, but it did not catch on. What it worked is the xplora watches. Only approved contacts and we can also contact our kids and check GPS position . They are a bit buggy sometimes but mostly fine

Got inspired by this and setup voip.ms and a grand stream for this. Just a “landline” and the monthly costs way lower and you don’t have to use the crappy tin can phone.

This is a nice idea, because it physically limits the place the child can call from. Even a very under-powered phone sets them free.

However, a new severely under-powered phone with no graphics or apps would probably meet the requirements of not being sucked into the grown-up world too early, and the kids can maintain their own contact lists.

And they'll grow super-fast thumbs like we had to in order to text :)

They cost about $50 but are still 4G.

> There's also a free plan where Tin Can users can call only other Tin Can users.

So you have to pay a monthly subscription for this, in addition to $75 for each phone, if you want to talk with anyone outside of their walled garden?

I have a Tin Can for my 8 year old – it is terrific and he loves it. He can call friends, grandparents, and his cousins; it is more reliable than the DIY version I was cobbling together with a Pi and some Legos; and my spouse or parents can supervise or update it too.

> she's found another way to put off getting her [8-year-old] daughter a cellphone

I don't live in the US but my child, who is 9, does not have a cell phone nor does any of his school mates. They "chat" when they see each other in school, or when they hang out together to play after school.

I'm missing the benefit to this over just adding on phone service to my cable internet bill.

This seems to be begging for a DIY project, doesn't it?

A 3d printed case, a little SoC, perhaps a Raspberry Pi Zero, as the brains with asterisk and some additional open source software providing a web interface running on it.

Why not using the actual land line? I still have one. My 13 year old son, who has no phone, uses it and it works. I'm just curious.

https://archive.is/2025.09.26-193418/https://www.businessins...

Smartphones are good and we shouldn't demonize them.

>some gen Xers don't say hello..

That's entirely pragmatic in this data collecting age. Being silent and hanging up as soon as you hear the spam won't get you marked as a phone line that has a human on the other end nor do you risk your voice being recorded. If you're silly enough to say your name when answering you'll just end up with text and email that is now personalised with your name (it's much faster to identify and hang up when their best intro is to say "hello who am i speaking to?" on a single person line click).

I don't know anyone in my age bracket (45) who doesn't do this let alone those younger. It's entirely understood and expected. Fuck anyone who says it's rude and those of an age particularly prone to falling for scams (70+ and 15under) should be encouraged to do this. You should be telling your kids "never say anything on picking up, let the caller to your phone identify themselves! They could be scammers trying to get your details such as your name".

I feel all these "OMG the kids don't say hello anymore they have no etiquette!!!" statements are either from the clueless or from spammers frustrated that it's much harder to get through if you don't know their name.

When I was 12 or so (might have been older)? I had convinced my parents to buy me a lantern battery (6v) and lots of wire. I connected all in series - two speakers and the battery connecting my room to my brother's room. Unfortunately only I could control which speaker was acting as a microphone (I had to swap the battery terminals the wires were connected.)

I guess that was my "tin can".

Full circle moment.

Somewhat OT:

It is actually amazing how far with a couple of tin cans, greaseproof paper taped around one end, and string attached to the paper. You are not going to do VOIP, but 50 yards is possible.

Even more OT:

One Xmas my Dad (unredeemable gadget freak, early adopter of the TRS80) gave me and my little bro two wired handsets with batteries and a ringer. We wired up brother's bedroom to living room, but soon realised our horrible mistake:

[ring, ring]

"Can I have a glass of water?"

[ring, ring]

"Can I have a glass of water?"

It lasted less than a day.

We also had a similar setup that did morse code, that was much less intrusive, not least because me and my little bro did not know morse, except for SOS.

Most of those "ideas" are basically :

- take a phone, remove features, package with bright colors, profit (or VC then profit, maybe).

Sadly a lot of those aren't recycling old gadgets, they are just making new ones and block features, lock down in their own "store", etc. I think it's actually quite terrible.

This sounds like a brilliant idea. But I suspect they’re going to wedge themselves unnecessarily in the middle to extract and enshittify.

I don’t see why these would ever need to be more than a pay once product.

I fail to see any benefit over:

1. dumb phone with fixed dial contacts

2. properly set smartphone which can be used as dumb phone with restricted contacts and no app install allowed, apps screen time limited to zero or heck even browser disabled in guest profile

3. kids smartwatch with parental controls which limit who they can call and who can call and message them, I'm just working on one of these and it's great even for seniors

If you don't like kid having wearable with them I have shocking news for you - you can leave all of the above at home!

Btw. kids nowadays don't really call each other, they text (IM) each other. And for the record I am one of those few parents who didn't give phone/tablet to their toddlers hands like majority of people do wheever they are (public transport, car, waiting room, etc.), my older elementary school kid has "dumb" phone (my old Symbian Nokia, but he use it only for calls/SMS anyway, though I will probably switch to restricted smartphone since it's inconvenient even for me not being able to send whatsapp message, battery is crap and classmates have whatsapp as well), my younger elementary school kid doesn't have anything, but when she goes outside alone she takes Motorola walkie talkie with roughly 0.5-1km range in city.

edit: related call scene from Fight Club how Tyler properly answers the phone (not answering but calling back and his first response is "Who is this?"):

https://youtu.be/tlw677Une_Q?si=xj3Sce9RdQ-_UfZP&t=85

...not mention of encryption.

Although the idea is lovely, I'm not going to encourage my kiddo to chat with his buddies on a service that can hoover up their imagination for later manipulation.

This is the ultimate "parents think it's great, kids will think it's lame" product. I mean, I like it. And just the name conjures images of GenXers yelling at clouds on TikTok about how they used to use tin cans or Solo cups connected with string to talk to their friends, so it's clear who they're targeting with the marketing. But if I were 11-13yo and I got this when all my friends got an iPhone? I'd be furious.

But I dunno. Kids being what they are, seem to be developing curiosity about "retro tech". So maybe there's some sort of whiplash effect occurring among them.

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