*New York Governor Kathy Hochul is advocating for a statewide ban on smartphones in schools.
The proposal would permit students to carry only phones without Internet access, The Guardian reports.
The governor plans to introduce the bill later this year and address it in New York’s next legislative session in January 2025. Hochul attributes the decline in youth mental health to social media.
Per WHAM – Rochester, local seventh-grade student Gianna Crawford said, “I definitely agree that we shouldn’t be using them in class. But if something were to happen and we needed to contact our parents, I feel like we should have them.”
One of the primary reasons parents in the US have opposed banning smartphones in schools is the need to stay in contact with their children at all times, especially during emergencies.
“I have seen these addictive algorithms pull in young people, literally capture them and make them prisoners in a space where they are cut off from human connection, social interaction and normal classroom activity,” Hochul said, Newsmax reports.
“Parents are very anxious about mass shootings in school,” she said. “Parents want the ability to have some form of connection in an emergency situation.”
Here’s more from TechSpot:
Hochul is also pushing the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (Safe) for Kids act. It would require social media platforms to provide minors with a default chronological feed composed of accounts they follow rather than ones suggested by an algorithm. The bill would also give parents more controls, such as the ability to block access to night-time notifications.
Another of the governor’s bills, the New York Child Data Protection act, restricts the collection of children’s personal data by online sites that have knowledge of a user’s age.
Companies and trade groups have spent more than $800,000 lobbying against one or both of the acts.
Meanwhile, Abby Griffin, a parent and teacher in New York, acknowledges the importance of communication but believes it can become a distraction in school.
“I don’t really see a benefit to having it,” Griffin said, WHAM – Rochester reports. “Students already have access to laptops and iPads that are given by the schools right now, so I think that’s plenty.”
She added, “I think from a parents standpoint, as my kids get older, I think, yes, it’s nice to be able to contact them, but there’s really no need to contact them throughout the day.”
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