NYCs AI in schools policy is first step in prying children away from the grips of Big Tech it may come just in time

NYC school kids will be pried from their screens this school year.A new sweeping policy — said to be the strictest in the nation — will prevent local public school kids in elementary and middle school using AI or spending excessive time on screens during the school day.“We’re putting guardrails in place to protect the critical human connection, curiosity, and creativity that helps children grow,” Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels said in a statement.The new rules, which will go into effect this month, prevent kids in preschool through 8th grade from using any sort of generative AI, while high schoolers will only be able to use AI in limited supervised contexts.The policy also firms up guardrails for teachers: no AI for grading, monitoring behavior, or writing special education plans.Parents, teachers, and students themselves should be cheering.

This policy is an encouraging (albeit overdue) step towards freeing childhood from the grips of Big Tech.Districts across the country have for years embraced laptops, tablets, and gadgets to help “prepare kids for a digital age.”However, little did they know, what they were really doing is introducing distractions into the classroom that made kids even less prepared for the real world.At my own elementary and middle school in the early 2000s, educators thought they were doing the best thing by digitizing our black board with “Smart Boards” that upload notes online and arming every 5th grader with a MacBook.But all that did was unleash cyberbullying, teach us to pretend to pay attention in class while we were scrolling the internet, and condition us for a life lived behind screens — precisely during the school hours when kids are supposed to be learning, socializing, and living in the real world with one another.In 2026 it has become clear, children need to learn to think for themselves before they get in the habit of outsourcing to a computer.School districts who were sold over the past several decades on ...