Landlines are back in ahead of Australia’s U16 social media ban

Landline* telephones have been making a comeback.

As Australia’s December social media ban* for under-16s fast approaches, many people have been looking to old landline technology as a way for kids and younger teens to stay in touch with friends.

With concerns around youth mental health, tech addiction* and digital safety only growing, the landline provides connection and independence – but with boundaries.

In a US community in Maine, known as a “landline pod”, a group of families have gotten together to reinstall wall phones for their pre-teen children, to reduce distraction and improve their listening and empathy* skills through having focused phone conversations.

Meanwhile, in the UK, some schools have reintroduced landlines in boarding houses as part of a policy to reduce smartphone addiction among students aged 13-16. Teachers at St Edward’s School in Oxford have reported greater participation in after-school activities and more books being borrowed from the school library since the landlines were introduced last September.

“Having a landline meant you never knew who was calling (unless they were saved in your favourites list) or who would pick up,” said Marty McGrath, head of Telstra’s Fixed Connectivity* products team. “This built kids’ confidence, social skills, and the ability to quickly decide between saying hello or just hanging up out of sheer panic.”

A lot of families have realised that by getting rid of their landline, they took away a helpful lifeline for kids to connect with friends and family and replaced it with a convenient but dangerous option – the smartphone, said Andrea Davis, author of Creating a Tech-Healthy Family and founder of the Better Screen Time website.

“My 13-year-old son, who doesn’t have a smartphone, used our landline today to call and make plans with a friend,” she said. “Our local library has a free landline outside the building for anyone to use. I’m hopeful that schools, families and community partners will make landlines accessible again for our children.”

Having given her eldest daughter Elise an old smartphone when she was 12 to keep in touch with friends when they moved cities, Ms Davis was horrified when a few months later she saw a social media post from her daughter lip syncing to an inappropriate song for her age group.

Ms Davis knew her daughter didn’t really understand the meaning of the lyrics but she was alarmed: “I realised at that moment that we had failed her. We had given her too much, too soon. The algorithms* had pulled my child into content that was completely inappropriate for her age.”

She said when she and her husband told Elise they were going to replace her smartphone with a phone without internet access, Elise cried – but within weeks they started seeing her old self return as she started drawing more and enjoying her ballet classes.

“She was still a normal teen navigating adolescence but she was herself again – not some distracted version of herself,” she said.

Now aged 20, Elise said while she found the restrictions difficult at the time and she felt left out, she’s now “super grateful” for her parents’ decision to restrict her access to the internet and now has a healthy relationship with her phone.

In fact, one of her friends recently confessed to feeling so addicted to her phone she needed to sleep with it clutched in her hands.

Ms Davis said: “My daughter talked her into setting her phone on the floor in the middle of the room, instead of sleeping with it. This was real progress!”

The trend comes as one Australian school announced sweeping changes to its use of digital technology in the classroom.

St Ignatius’ College in South Australia has banned access to digital devices for students up to Year 3 level and their use will be heavily restricted for their peers up to Year 9 in a nation-first tech-smart initiative.

St Ignatius’ College principal Lauren Brooks said with the initiative, staff and students were “questioning the true impact” of the growing dominance* of digital technology in education.

Students up to Year 3 level will have no access to digital devices, except for rare instances where they are required for learning.

From Years 4 to 6 at the college, students will be allowed up to one hour of device use per day.

Students in Years 7 to 9 will have 50 per cent of their learning time free from digital technology.

“As technology races ahead in a manner that is unprecedented* and untested, we will not continue to follow blindly,” Ms Brooks said.

“This initiative ensures that students are authentically* stretched in their learning, encouraged to maintain originality in their work, develop their creative capacity and critically interrogate* information and ideas.”

POLL

GLOSSARY

• landline: a physical telephone connection using wires or optical fibres that connects the person’s house or business to the wider network
• social media ban: from December this year, Australia will enforce a world-first ban on social media for kids under the age of 16. The new laws were introduced to protect young, developing brains from the dangers of the online world as well as the addictive nature of social media platforms, including predatory algorithms
• tech addiction: the inability to control your use of tech, including feeling like you can’t stop scrolling or watching videos and feeling like you have to keep picking up your phone every few minutes
• empathy: showing concern for and trying to understand the feelings of others
• Fixed Connectivity: landlines
• algorithms: a set of rules that decide what users see based on the user’s past views, preferences, behaviour and interactions
• dominance: the rule of one particular thing over everything else
• unprecedented: never seen or experienced before
• authentically: real
• interrogate: question

EXTRA READING
Literacy gifts comics the last laugh
YouTube added to U16 social ban
‘Dumbphone’ dare not so stupid

QUICK QUIZ
1. What are some benefits to using landlines?
2. Why are families getting them reinstalled?
3. When does Australia’s ban on social media for under 16s come into effect?
4. What are some possible benefits of reducing screen time at schools?
5. At what year level will students at St Ignatius be able to start using digital devices at school?

LISTEN TO THIS STORY

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. No phones?
How would our lives change if there were no phones – not mobile, not landline – at all? Write a description of what a typical day in your life might look like without phones or digital technologies.

Time: allow at least 25 minutes to complete this activity
Curriculum Links: English, Critical and Creative Thinking

2. Extension
Do you think that banning smartphones is the answer to the problems facing young people today? Write a convincing paragraph that explains your opinion on this question.

Time: allow at least 20 minutes to complete this activity
Curriculum Links: English, Personal and Social Capability

VCOP ACTIVITY
Read this!
A headline on an article – or a title on your text – should capture the attention of the audience, telling them to read this now. So choosing the perfect words for a headline or title is very important.

Create three new headlines for the events that took place in this article. Remember, what you write and how you write it will set the pace for the whole text, so make sure it matches.

Read out your headlines to a partner and discuss what the article will be about based on the headline you created. Discuss the tone and mood you set in just your few, short words. Does it do the article justice? Will it capture the audience’s attention the way you hoped? Would you want to read more?

Consider how a headline or title is similar to using short, sharp sentences throughout your text. They can be just as important as complex ones. Go through the last text you wrote and highlight any short, sharp sentences that capture the audience.