By John Herrman, a tech columnist at Intelligencer, nymag.com, 8 May 2025
Starting at the beginning of the 2025–26 school year, New York public and charter schools will be implementing plans for “bell-to-bell” smartphone bans, which prohibit the “unsanctioned use of smartphones and other internet-enabled personal devices on school grounds in K-12 schools for the entire school day.” If you’re a New York student and the plan’s various small exceptions don’t apply to you, your phone will be going in the bag (or the box, or the cubby, or the office).
Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photo: Getty Images
New York is far from the first state to implement smartphone restrictions in schools, but it’s the largest to go so far, and its ban marks a tipping point: Whatever you think of the broad, bipartisan, passionate, but also sort of disorganized and confused campaign to ban smartphones from classrooms, it’s winning. More than half of American states have something on the books, while more than a dozen have policies that resemble outright bans, many of which will go into effect next year. France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Brazil all have national bans of some sort, and countless other countries are close behind.
New York is far from the first state to implement smartphone restrictions in schools, but it’s the largest to go so far, and its ban marks a tipping point: Whatever you think of the broad, bipartisan, passionate, but also sort of disorganized and confused campaign to ban smartphones from classrooms, it’s winning. More than half of American states have something on the books, while more than a dozen have policies that resemble outright bans, many of which will go into effect next year. France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Brazil all have national bans of some sort, and countless other countries are close behind.
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