Gen Z is bringing back the landline. Very few people own landlines these days. In fact, according to the Washington Post, barely 25% of Americans lived in homes that had one in 2022. But the nostalgia-loving Zoomers are embracing the cord – as a way to disconnect. They don’t need a landline, but they want one because it reminds them of simpler times.
“I love the novelty of talking to my friends and sitting in one place,” one Gen Z woman named Sunny told The Guardian. “When I’m having a long text conversation with a friend, I’ll just ask if we can speak over the phone and catch up.”
“There’s no caller ID, so I can’t screen who’s calling,” said 27-year-old Sam Casper, who owns an old-school pink rotary dial phone that was her "mom’s husband’s grandma’s phone." “If I meet a new friend and they’re the type of person I’d invite back to my house, they get the landline. Whenever I hear my phone ringing, I get so giddy. I love to just sit there and talk and twirl the little cord.”
Unfortunately, this embrace of landline nostalgia may be short-lived. Service providers, like AT&T in California, are looking to phase out landlines altogether, calling them a“historical curiosity that’s no longer necessary."