When Justin Finn’s two kids, who are in elementary school, get home, they don’t turn on the TV or pick up an iPad. Instead, they go straight to the phone — not a smartphone, but a landline. The calls arrive on a cream-colored device called the Tin Can, a device inspired by landlines, with a Wi-Fi connection, which costs US$100 and has gone viral over the last twelve months.
“It’s not uncommon for the phone to start ringing a few minutes later,” says Finn. “There’s a real enthusiasm around it that we haven’t seen with a lot of other new additions in-house.”
Since its launch in April 2025, the retro-style device has become a success, with hundreds of thousands of units sold, mainly thanks to word-of-mouth recommendation, according to the company.
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This is despite limited marketing and relatively small fundraising, including $3.5 million over the summer and a $12 million seed round in December led by Greylock Partners.
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The Tin Can plugs into a wall outlet and includes a speakerphone, speed dial buttons, and answering machine. The phone, which is also sold in several vibrant colors, allows you to make free calls between Tin Can devices and to emergency services.
Users can also pay $10 a month to call and receive calls from parent-approved outside numbers. The device is available in the United States and Canada.
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Tin Can was well received at a time when parents, educators and legislators are looking for alternatives to the constant use of screens. Countries around the world are considering restricting social networks for young people after Australia approved a ban for children under 16.
In the US, in turn, Meta and Alphabet’s Google last month lost an emblematic court case in Los Angeles, brought by a 20-year-old woman who claimed that addiction to these platforms fueled mental health problems.
The Finn family received the Tin Can for free as part of a parent-led initiative at Nativity Parish School outside Kansas City — one of a growing number of schools that are distributing the device to students in an attempt to curb early social media addiction.
Schools and parents join the bandwagon
Orders from schools are among the fastest-growing market segments for Tin Can, according to the Seattle-based company. The startup told Bloomberg News that it has seen “overwhelming demand” from educational institutions, with thousands of administrators in the US considering bulk purchases and coordinating how to integrate their communities into the network.
At Nativity Parish School, about 95 percent of kindergarten through fifth-grade families have signed up. Students know who to call by writing down numbers in a paper directory — a reference to what people did in the last century when they wanted to call someone.
Tracy Foster, mother of two students at the school, led the initiative.
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“For many people, keeping kids off smartphones is difficult in practice, but programs like this give them more tools to feel like they can do that,” he said. Tracy added that it’s easier to delay smartphone use for an entire group rather than just one child or two.
Foster said he has since received more than a hundred requests from parents interested in replicating the program in their own schools.
Across the country, St. James’ Episcopal School in Los Angeles plans to distribute a Tin Can to each of its 220 families at the end of class. The expectation is that students will use the devices during the long summer holidays.
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“We want our students to stay connected to each other and use this option instead of group messaging or other forms of contact that can sometimes generate bad feelings or make someone feel left out,” said Jules Leyser, director of development and communications at the school.
CEO Chet Kittleson, 38, founded Tin Can about a year and a half ago in response to the anxiety he felt about organizing after-school get-togethers for his children. Growing up in the 1990s, he realized, the landline was his social network.
He believes the way children communicate today — via text messaging or video calls — undermines the development of communication skills. Everyone should know how to “deal with silence in a significantly different way,” he said, referring to natural pauses in voice conversations.
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Finn said he quickly noticed significant improvements in his children’s behavior. “They are more careful when speaking, better listeners and, overall, more confident,” he said. However, her kindergartener son learned the hard way that the 911 emergency number works at Tin Can, which resulted in a surprise visit to the family’s doorstep.
Kittleson credits Tin Can’s early success to word of mouth and a growing distrust of smartphones, combined with nostalgia among Gen X and millennial parents.
“We could have created a modern device with a childlike appearance,” Kittleson said. “But I wanted something immediately recognizable to the buyer — the parent — something intuitive that reminded them of a simpler childhood, because that’s what we’re all looking for. That really helped us grow quickly.”
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According to him, the biggest challenge now is keeping up with accelerated growth, hiring quickly, investing in infrastructure and maintaining a reliable service that can scale. After a spike in installations on Christmas Day, the company faced server failures and apologized for the instability.
“Our job is to deliver a really good and reliable product and service,” he said. “I think we’re going to make it – and get there in a sustainable way.”
