Press

Stockholm, Sweden · 8 September 2026 · For immediate release

Barnluren, the screen-free home landline for children that can only reach the people their parents have approved, is now open for orders in Spain, Denmark and Finland — its first markets outside Sweden. Devices are in stock and ship immediately.

Barnluren is a landline for the home, connected over Wi-Fi to a closed family network. The child can only call contacts their parents have approved. No screen, no open internet, no connection to the public phone network. The handset can be an analogue phone the family already owns.

The family side of the network has always been international: parents, grandparents and friends answer in the free Barnluren app, which works anywhere in the world. What is new is that the child's device now ships to homes in Spain, Denmark and Finland as well as Sweden.

The expansion comes as the debate about children and smartphones sharpens across Europe. Finland restricted mobile phone use during the school day by law from August 2025. Denmark's schools and after-school clubs are phone-free by law from this school year, on the recommendation of the government's wellbeing commission. In Spain, every region now has rules restricting phones in the classroom. School bans settle the school day — Barnluren is built for the hours after it: a real phone at home means parents can say no to the smartphone without cutting their child off from family and friends.

How it works

Two children with Barnluren call each other directly. Family and friends answer in the app. Setup takes about five minutes. Calls are never recorded, and the only data held about the child is a first name. The service runs on Barnluren's own infrastructure within the EU, with no advertising and no sale of data.

Old analogue phones work just as they are. Barnluren also takes in used phones and gets them ringing again in a new family's home: barnluren.com/kretsloppet.

Stockholm, Sweden · 1 September 2026 · For immediate release

Since the landline disappeared, children have had no good way to stay in touch with family and friends. Barnluren fixes that by bringing the home phone back to life.

Barnluren is now open for orders across Sweden. Devices are in stock and ship immediately.

Barnluren is a landline for the home, connected over Wi-Fi to a closed family network. The child can only call contacts their parents have approved. No screen, no open internet, no connection to the public phone network. The handset can be an analogue phone the family already owns.

The child calls either the Barnluren app – which grandma, say, has installed on her phone – or a friend who also has a Barnluren.

The launch comes in the middle of a shift. The share of Swedish nine-year-olds with their own mobile phone fell from 82 to 67 percent between 2022 and 2024, according to the Swedish Media Authority's report Ungar & medier 2025. A national mobile phone ban has applied in compulsory schools (ages 6–16) since 1 August. And since June, the Public Health Agency of Sweden has recommended that children wait until the year they turn 13 for a smartphone, pointing to a simple phone without internet as the alternative. Barnluren is built for the gap that opens up: parents should be able to say no to the smartphone without cutting their child off from grandma and their friends.

How it works

Two children with Barnluren call each other directly. Family and friends answer in the app. Setup takes about five minutes. Calls are never recorded, and the only data held about the child is a first name. The service runs on Barnluren's own infrastructure within the EU, with no advertising and no sale of data.

Old analogue phones work just as they are. Barnluren also takes in used phones and gets them ringing again in a new family's home. We care about children's future – and about the environment they will inherit: barnluren.com/kretsloppet.

Stockholm, August 2026 — Barnluren, the Swedish company behind a screen-free private phone network for children, today announced that Andreas Tael has joined as Co-founder.

Andreas Tael spent ten years at King, most recently leading the New Games R&D team — around 20 people running up to three games at once, built to find out fast whether real players wanted them. Around ten concepts came out of it, including Minecraft Blast. He then joined Mojang as Senior Product Manager for Minecraft Java, running the platform team behind one of the most loved games and opinionated communities in software.

Barnluren is a phone for children with no screen and no internet: a real handset, on a closed network, that only rings the people a parent has approved. The product launched publicly in Sweden in July 2026.

Read the full announcement on the Barnluren blog.

Press contact: [email protected]

Stockholm, April 2026

Swedish startup Barnluren invites 10 families to pioneer a private phone network for children.

Barnluren, a Swedish startup building a private voice network for children, today opened applications for its Pioneer Beta Program. The company is seeking 10 families to be the first to introduce Barnluren to their communities.

Each selected pioneer will receive 10 Barnluren devices to distribute among connected families — children in the same school class or friend group. The program is designed to validate whether a network of children using simple landline phones can build the kind of independent social connections that disappeared when the family landline was replaced by smartphones.

The pioneer program is free for three months, including the device. Barnluren is a closed private network — no connection to the public phone system, no internet access, and no ability for anyone not on the parent-approved contact list to reach a child. Family members use a free iOS or Android app to call and receive calls.

The program comes as Sweden prepares to implement a national school phone ban in August 2026, and amid growing international momentum to delay children's smartphone access. Grassroots movements such as Ki-DS (Sweden) and Smartphone Free Childhood (UK) now represent hundreds of thousands of parents across dozens of countries.

Barnluren was founded in 2025 in Stockholm by Greg Chrystall and Ivan Soltic. The company designs its own hardware and firmware and is working with Mitac AB to manufacture devices in Sweden.

Families can apply to the Pioneer Beta Program at barnluren.com/pioneer.

Press contact: [email protected]