You knew your best friend's number by heart. Your child doesn't even have a way to dial one.
Hotline is a screen-free phone that only ever reaches the friends your child wants to call — or you, in an emergency. Nothing else.
You've handed over your phone before. To finish cooking. To finish one email. To get five uninterrupted minutes. And then, quietly, the second thought — what did I just start. You already know where it goes: five more minutes, then five more, then the fight to get it back.
69% of the time, our research found, the phone didn't come back when the call did.
A phone that can only call the friends already on it doesn't lead to any more fights. There's nothing else on it to negotiate for.
"I wake up and look at my phone first."— Grade 8 student, Mumbai, from our research interviews
You stretched the cord under your bedroom door. You knew your best friend's number by heart before you knew your own address. Someone eventually yelled at you to get off the phone. That was the whole technology stack — and it worked.
Hotline is the closest thing to giving that back.
Nothing on Hotline can ever reach your child except the friends and family already on it. That's the one rule every design decision has to answer to.
Everything else — the shape, the buttons, exactly how it connects — we're still designing. Tell us what matters to you →
of children have no way to call a friend on their own.
Join the waiting list
We'll only write when there's real news — pricing, timelines, and a chance to be one of the founding families whose feedback shapes the final product.
Take the four-minute survey
"Earlier I used to just go down and play with my friends. But now I'm always watching something." — a 13-year-old, in our research. If that sounds like your child too, four minutes today helps us build something different.
Tell us what you think
Questions, doubts, "what about—", or just a thought from the exhibition. We read every one.