By Rachel Hutton, The Minnesota Star Tribune

MINNEAPOLIS — Teenagers are generally obsessed with their smartphones. So much so that Kristin Hatling’s family recently encountered a gaggle of them who had brought their screens into a resort’s hot tub.

“My daughter, who’s 11, was like, ‘Mom, all they’re doing is looking at their phones and, like, making kissy faces into them. They’re not even talking to each other.”

While a majority of American 11-and-12-year-olds have their own smartphones , the Minneapolis mother of three is among a growing cohort of parents looking back to their own childhoods for a lower-tech alternative. They’re ringing up the landline most households have now abandoned, whose old-school handsets are so rare parents have to coach kids how to use them. These modern “

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