Cellphone generation hung up on a landline renaissance

Landlines are nearing obsolescence. For many young people, they've gone the way of CD-Roms, cassette tapes and the humble printer. On TikTok, parents film their children holding wall phones like archival pieces, unsure of how to place a call. Payphones are long gone, too. But not everyone's ready to hang up the curly-corded receiver.

- Alaina Demopoulos

Nicole Randone, a 24-year-old from Westchester, New York, takes calls from her bedroom using a purple Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen-branded landline first sold in 2003, when she was three years old. "One of my first memories is the tan landline that my parents had mounted to the kitchen wall," Randone said. "I always fantasised about the day I'd have one in my own room." 

All of Randone's style takes influence from what she calls "2000s nostalgia" - on Instagram, she posts to her audience of 118,000 followers showing off a bedroom decorated with a bright pink boombox, Von Dutch accessories and Chad Michael Murray wall posters. "Having a landline really bridges that gap between reality and my childhood fantasy," Randone said. "I feel like the main character in my favourite TV shows - One Tree Hill, The OC, Gilmore Girls - when I use it."

The overwhelming majority of American adults do not own landlines. According to the Washington Post, barely a quarter of Americans lived in homes that had one in 2022. The number has basically deathdropped since 2010, when about 63% of Americans had both wireless and landline options.