Say no to the smartphone without cutting your child off

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.

Price

• Buy: SEK 499 for the adapter + SEK 40/month, first 30 days free
• Rent: SEK 80/month from day one

Terms: No lock-in. Purchased hardware can be returned within 6 months. Barnluren is a closed network and cannot call outside numbers, including the emergency number 112. Order at barnluren.com.

About Barnluren

A screen-free way for children to stay in touch with friends and family. Founded in Stockholm in 2025 by Greg Chrystall and Ivan Soltic; Andreas Tael joined as co-founder in 2026. Operated by Barnluren 555 AB (Swedish company reg. no. 559480-7827).

Press contact: Greg Chrystall · [email protected] · +46 70 969 09 86 · Press images: barnluren.com/press