New York City banned AI for its youngest 600,000 students.
New York City has decided that artificial intelligence is not ready for children. Starting September 10, about 600,000 of them will not be allowed to use it at school.
The Department of Education finalized the policy on September 2. Chalkbeat reported the shape of it: student-facing generative AI, chatbots and AI tutors, banned from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. That is roughly two thirds of the system's enrollment, according to ABC7 New York.
That is the AI half. The screen half goes further.
Children in grades three through five are capped at thirty minutes of screen time a day. Grades six through eight get forty-five. NY1 and Chalkbeat published the same figures. Pre-kindergarten through second grade get no individual device at all.
High school is the exception, and it is a narrow one. Teenagers keep access through five vetted pilot classrooms, monitored, and every high schooler sits through AI literacy lessons twice a year. NY1 reported a cap of forty-five minutes a week inside those pilots. Chalkbeat described the pilots without naming a cap. Those are two accounts of the same provision, and neither resolves the other.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced it alongside Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels. Samuels had already said the city's March draft guidance missed the mark. This is the version that replaced it.
The stated reason is not harm. It is the absence of evidence. "I have yet to see a study showing that AI is beneficial for elementary and middle school students," Mamdani said, per NY1. The Mayor's Office calls the result the most expansive student-facing generative AI moratorium of its kind in the country.
The city did not say AI hurts children. It said nobody has shown that it helps them.
By the numbers
- 600,000 — students covered by the ban, about two thirds of NYC public school enrollment[1]
- September 10 — the date the rules take effect, the first day of the school year[2]
- 30 and 45 minutes — daily screen-time caps for grades 3-5 and grades 6-8[3]
- five — vetted, monitored high school pilot classrooms that keep AI access[4]
The reporting
This story is built on reporting by Chalkbeat. Read the original →
Sources
- Chalkbeat, NYC schools to set AI policy, ban screen time limits
- ABC7 NY, New York City public schools banning AI use through middle school
- NY1, New York City bans AI use in schools through eighth grade
- NYC Mayor's Office, Mayor Mamdani and Chancellor Samuels put students first
Image credits
- Hero: source (Mayoral Photography Office) — Michael Appleton
- In story: source (Wikimedia Commons, public domain) — National Cancer Institute/NIH
- In story: source (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0) — Chris Sampson