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Do you have a landline telephone?
- Thread starter Eunice
- Start date
We don't do cell phones until fifteen so yeah, land line.Oh, I didn't know that. Thanks!
I think I'll keep the landline though because I'm not ready for my 6th grade daughter to have her own cell phone with service.
I have one that USED to be a copper wire old school set up, kept it specifically for use during disasters. So imagine my surprise when PG&E turned the power off for a week last fall and my phone didn't work. I'd been paying a ridiculously higher rate compared to a digital line and when crunch time came - bogus. Bastards! (they apparently migrated our neighborhood over to some sort of partial digital setup without telling me).
I still remember as a kid in the early 90s seeing how pissed off my Mom was when she realized she’d been renting a crap phone from the phone company for $12/month for over a decade 
It was in the basement and hardly used, which is why it went forgotten for so long- at $12/month in 80s/90s dollars. Yikes
It was in the basement and hardly used, which is why it went forgotten for so long- at $12/month in 80s/90s dollars. Yikes 
it actually is, particularly in the US health care industry. HIPPA rules regard fax as a secure means of communication (as opposed to email - go figure), so fax is still widely in use.
how does she handle it? my cellphone-less 5th grader can see where he's being left out of the loop with his friends who have phones and it's starting to bug him. we were determined to hold out as long as we could, but when he's off to middle school next year, it's probably inevitable. resistance is futile.Oh, I didn't know that. Thanks!
I think I'll keep the landline though because I'm not ready for my 6th grade daughter to have her own cell phone with service.
It's been kinda tough, but I gave her my old phone so she can have spotify and listen to terrible pop music while on wifi signal and that helps. It also helps that her friends don't really seem to use their phones much for texting and don't have social media. We let her play games on our phones or on the ipad, and she can use the computer to check her email. That seems to sate her for now, but with junior high next year, who knows how long we will be able to hold out.
I think it helps that shes a girl. All the boys in her school seem REALLY into looking at memes and youtubers, so that makes her not at all interested in it
We switched over to a a VOIP with Spectrum a few years ago. We only use it for registrations, school, etc.... They have a free service called Nomorobo which automatically blocks robo calls. The phone will ring once and show the number, then it cuts off the call. We went from receiving 25 to 30 robo calls a day down to 2 or 3.
With respect to the cell phones for kids, we gave our son a text phone for 6th and 7th grade. By 8th grade every kid had a smart phone so we bought my wife a new one and gave him her old Samsung. We put Life360 on it for tracking purposes and made it very clear that we could inspect the phone any time of day or night. He only blew it once by visiting an adult site. Said he and his friends were curious. We took it away for a week and he never did it again. Now he's 18 and bought his own phone on our plan. He pays us $100 a month for unlimited data and car insurance. Lucky kid.
With respect to the cell phones for kids, we gave our son a text phone for 6th and 7th grade. By 8th grade every kid had a smart phone so we bought my wife a new one and gave him her old Samsung. We put Life360 on it for tracking purposes and made it very clear that we could inspect the phone any time of day or night. He only blew it once by visiting an adult site. Said he and his friends were curious. We took it away for a week and he never did it again. Now he's 18 and bought his own phone on our plan. He pays us $100 a month for unlimited data and car insurance. Lucky kid.
We waited until the oldest was 16 and driving. After coming up to speed on the science, I felt like handing him a smart phone would be comparable to handing him some heroin and a needle. And then I handed him a smart phone. Getting him to moderate his screen time is a never-ending bitch. Sometimes parenting is un-fun.
And I haven't had a land line in over a decade.
Every now and then someone wants to fax something to work.
I try to get them to scan/email it (better scanners/copiers/printers can scan directly to email recipients), but 10% of people just won't.
Because it seems that there are some inherent problems sending/received faxes across various machines/data lines/whatever, I tell them, send it within 5 minutes so I can call you back and verify it is has been received, they agree, then down the hall I go to wait and 10 minutes, nothing, call back, "Oh, I haven't sent it yet."
Grrrr.
lol, i could have written this post myself, word for word, substituting "tablet" for "smart phone".
re: enforced moderation (on a tablet at the moment, but phone soon)....we used an app called Qustodio to set time and content limits, which worked well enough for a while and then became wildly undependable. we now use Google Family Portal, which works a little differently but kicks him off the device at exactly the times/intervals we specified. it's so much easier when the moderation is automatic - he knows how much time he has and when it ends and there's no one to argue with about it.
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With our daughter, she pretty much moderated herself. With our boy, it's a never ending battle.
i considered that route as well. chose not to do it based on some hare-brained notion that there was value in him learning self-discipline and self moderation
you would think that 50 years of life would have chipped away at some of my starry-eyed idealism and replaced it with some common sense practicality
maybe next year
That's awesome. In my experience she's exceptional. It would be interesting to do some science similar to the marshmallow experiment and figure out what drives her (and others like her) ability and how it correlates to success in other areas of life.
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you folks have no idea what happens behind the veils
you'd be surprised how many millions of dollars moves around the world via fax.
Very hard to hack a hard line unless you physically tap it
everything else is out in the open and widely available to steal across continents
data packets are amazing on how they work
the internet was our downfall
it should've stayed private
I don't feel sorry for all the electricity addicts when there's nothing to plug the thing into
airports are the worst
no better than a riding a costco wavestorm everyone here looks down on