Brrrrring! It's the landline calling

Perth Now

a day ago

Mum has ditched the home phone. The writing was on the wall when it started to ring and no one budged.
'Are you going to get that?' I asked.
'Don't bother,' Mum said. 'It's scammers. It's only ever scammers.'
She wasn't being paranoid. In the UK, an estimated 50 per cent of calls to landlines were from scammers. In Australia, 90 per cent of landline owners reported receiving scam calls. The other 10 per cent are busy investing in a new opportunity presented by a minor Nigerian royal.
And so, tired of paying for a service simply so criminals could contact her, Mum ditched the home phone. Which is bad news for me because if I am ever arrested/kidnapped/held hostage and can make a single call, that's the only phone number I have memorised (and, like everyone, the Pizza Hut delivery number from the early 90s). If you want to scam Mum you're going to have to work harder. Try some door-to-door scamming.
The home phone, once an essential part of any household, has largely disappeared. Only about a third of Australians still have a landline although most of them seem more decorative than useful — only 1.6 per cent of us have a landline as our only phone.
But don't sound the death knell just yet because, like low-rise jeans and diet culture, they are back, baby. Kind of. Riding a questionable wave of (misplaced?) nostalgia.
It's called digital minimalism, a trend being embraced by millennials and gen Zs who are sick of the toxic pull of smartphones and time-sucking properties of social media. You still use technology, but sparingly. Making it work for you in a positive way rather than the negative time suck it can be. A renewed interest in landlines is part of that. Sure, it's tied to one location and you can't access TikTok on it, but that's exactly its appeal.
Admittedly, a lot of the gen Z landline users seem more interested in posing for cute pictures with their retro phones. Pictures taken on their smartphones and then posted online. But not all the interest in landlines is rooted in nostalgia.
Millennial parents want to bring back the old home phone as a way to give their kids a line to the outside world without handing over a mobile phone. There is also the added bonus of teaching them how to speak on the phone. Yes, that's a skill that needs to be taught — we discovered this when it skipped a generation.
A 2023 survey found 60 per cent of Aussie gen Zs dread speaking on the phone. It's becoming a growing issue as this cohort enter the workforce, that is if they even pick up the initial screening call from HR after they email in their CV.
It seems that making awkward chitchat with your friend's parents or (mortifyingly) older siblings before the handset is handed to your mate is actually a big life skill. As is talking to your crush in the kitchen with your parents or (really mortifyingly) older siblings listening in.
Of course, unless the trickle turns into a flood, any revival of the home phone will simply involve a few kids calling their friends' parents' mobile phones. But with a growing awareness of the negatives of mobile phones, perhaps getting back to basics isn't such a bad idea after all.
Just make sure you screen out the scammers.