In this day and age you would be hard pressed to find a person who doesn’t own a cell phone. Cell phones have, in a way, shrunk the world. Any person that has a cell phone essentially has the bulk of the world’s knowledge at their disposal. It would seem that having a landline is completely unnecessary in this day and age, right? Not necessarily.

Surprisingly, as more and more members of Gen Z are moving out and living on their own, there has been an increase in landline phone sales. What is causing this particular trend? Are landlines the new vinyl, with Gen Z thinking landlines are cool? Or is there something more going on?

Desire for Privacy

One of the best things about everyone having a cell phone is that anybody can reach anybody that they need to at virtually any time. One of the biggest drawbacks to everyone having a cell one is that anybody can reach anybody at any time. With the increase of cell phones has come a decrease in the respect of boundaries that people have in place for contact. We hear more and more about people getting calls from their job on their days off because it is assumed they are always reachable by cell phone.

With a landline people are able to turn their phones off. Anybody who would need them for a legitimate emergency would have the number for their landline phone. With a landline phone they have a better idea of which calls to accept and which calls to ignore.

Better Quality

A simple fact of landline use is that, at least on the end of the user with the landline, the quality of phone calls is higher. There are fewer problems with faulty reception. There is a lack of distortion and poor quality. It does not matter if you are living in a small town or a big city like New York, if you have a clean line connection then the quality of the call should be fine (at least on your end). A landline can sometimes even work during a power outage.

Affordability

While most people who are taking up landlines are still using their cell phones, some people are ditching them entirely. This is because a landline may cost a user between $5 to $60 a month, depending on whether or not they have their service bundled with other services. It simply makes sense for users.