By Dan Buono, News staff

Hang up your hamburger phone, Juno. Landlines are on their way out. ‘
According to a study conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 7 to 9 percent of Americans rely solely on their cell phones to talk to each other, and have no landlines at home. Cord-free tendencies run most rampant in younger generations, the study showed.
Roughly half of Americans who use cell phones only were younger than’ 30, according to the study. ‘
‘It’s a change in communication for the new generation,’ said Elise Dallimore, a communication studies professor at Northeastern.
One reason cell phones have surpassed landlines in popularity may rest in the comparatively high degree of privacy they offer callers, some students said. ‘
Lauren Hale, a freshman physical therapy major, said the appeal is that a cell phone belongs to her. Though she has a landline at home, she said she hardly ever uses it.
‘Landlines are for mom and dad,’ she said.
Dallimore said she believes the opposite to be true of cell phones’ privacy factor; the phones, she said, are often used in public places.’
‘People now have to censor what they say if they are in an open space,’ she said. ‘People are talking on their phones in bathroom stalls or even when they are driving. It’s not safe.”
Moreover, she said her generation is far less likely than younger people to switch to cell phone only use. ‘
‘Landlines are still around because of quality and price, and because they are more personal,’ she said, noting the evident ‘- though’ not often celebrated ‘- perks, like no dropped calls, for instance, and a corresponding name listed in the Yellow Pages. ‘Like any new technology, there is going to be an evolution, and eventually landline phones will become a lot less popular.’
One potential downside to the cell phone shift comes in the form of recent, controversial studies that link mobile usage to cancer. According to a study last year, reported on the breaking science news website sciencedaily.com, people who use cell phones only, and use them excessively, have a 50 percent higher risk of developing a brain tumor on the side of the head where they hold their phone.
Carolina Marion, a freshman communication studies major, is a bit of a cultural anomaly in a world where teens and college students are typecast as gabbing exclusively on cell phones and the caricature of a young professional includes an IV-like connection to a Blackberry phone.’
She wishes more of her peers would use landlines, she said, because it is intimately connected to the place where a person lives.’ ‘ ‘
‘It’s a way to reach a person at their home,’ Marion said.’ ‘ ‘
Marion said that she has a landline phone at her home, but that her parents are thinking about getting rid of it. ‘
‘My whole family has cell phones now and the only people that call our home phone are telemarketers,’ Marion said. ‘ ‘
Dallimore said the move from landline phones to cell phones is’ interesting and that it shows a trend in younger generations in ways of communicating.
It’s a way to investigate’ new trends in communications and where the future of phones is headed, Dallimore said.’ ‘ ‘
‘It shows the shifting interaction of human relations,’ Dallimore said.