Ban smartphones in schools
According to Gov. Hochul, Smartphones should not be allowed in school.
They are not only a unnecessary distraction but also harmful to children’s development.
Smartphones can lead to addiction to social media, especially among girls, and online games, mainly among boys.
Parents who try to limit their children’s phone usage often find that it isolates them from socializing as everyone else is connected through their phones.
Any school that requires students to use phones for classwork is harming those students.
While Hochul, a mother and grandmother, plans to advocate for a smartphone ban in the next legislative session, she is currently pushing for other bills to protect children’s privacy and combat social-media despair, such as the New York Child Data Protection and the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act.
She is open to allowing simple “dumb” phones that only send texts, as parents often want to be able to communicate with their children easily.
If companies like Meta, TikTok, and gaming companies do not prioritize protecting child users, then the government must step in to set regulations.
By challenging the tech giants, Hochul is fighting to protect kids from the defining problem of our time.
This is a cause that all New Yorkers should support.
