I Miss Landlines!

May 31, 2025

This post is probably going to come off as a sort of boomer rant, but I feel compelled to share it because I haven’t really heard anyone talk about this before (including actual boomers, ironically).

Anyways, I miss landlines. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that I miss the rhythm of life that landlines were designed for. I know the idea seems asinine – but I assure you, my nostalgia is sensible and warranted.

If an older person is reading this, they’ll probably understand what I’m about to say intuitively. But for people who’ve never had a landline in their own home, the thought might seem irrelevant.

Solely from a technological standpoint, landlines were actually great for what they were designed to do, and superior to modern VOIP systems in many ways. Call quality was crystal clear, and latency was non-existent. Anybody old enough to recall speaking over a landline can attest that it was pure bliss.

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“But cell phones are so convenient! I can reach anyone, anytime, anywhere!”

In some circumstances that is certainly nice, but it’s also annoying. Let me give an example:

I currently work a job that is heavily dependent on me being attached to my cell phone. I regularly deal with people trying to contact me late into the evening, when they should be doing literally anything else. When landlines were the prevalent form of long-distance communication, people had a stronger sense of personal boundaries that everyone was expected to respect. It was considered rude to call someone late in the day, because in doing so you weren’t just calling Mr. Johnson – you were really calling the entire Johnson household, potentially disrupting the life of the family.

And I think that last point best expresses my real nostalgia for landlines. There’s something about the idea of a household calling a household that I really like. It recalls a time when people were generally more connected with one another and less atomized. An individual calling an individual certainly has it’s utilitarian merits, I guess.

I’ll end on this note: the ubiquitous switch from landlines to cell phones is, more often than not, framed as a normal technological advancement. But I think that in a very small way, that “advancement” is also just another thing that’s taking us from a more communal and familial society, to a more isolated one.

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