Proposal adds K-5 device limits, paper tests; hearing set for Sept. 15
Two New York City Council members are calling for a citywide ban on students using YouTube in city schools, citing declining test scores and pressure from parents and teachers. Shekar Krishnan, who chairs the Council’s Oversight and Investigations Committee, and Eric Dinowitz, chair of the Education Committee, are also pushing a broader package that would bar gamified learning apps, eliminate individual digital devices for kindergarten through fifth grade and return standardized tests to paper and pencil, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“This issue of banning YouTube in the classroom is personal to me,” Krishnan said, according to the WSJ. “I don’t believe it has educational value. I believe it does much more harm.” He said he has seen the impact of unrestricted access to school devices on his own young children.
The proposal would bar students from viewing YouTube on their devices and require the city Department of Education to supply evidence justifying other classroom uses, such as teachers showing videos in class, the Journal reported. Krishnan plans to introduce legislation to compel the department to assess the proposal.
Dinowitz, a former teacher, framed the package as a defense of instruction rather than a rejection of technology. “It’s not anti-technology. It’s pro-learning,” he said, according to the Journal. “The idea that we just throw computers and screens and AI models in front of kids runs in complete contrast to what we know actually works in the classroom.”
The push comes weeks after Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced earlier this month that the city Department of Education will ban student-facing artificial intelligence for elementary and middle-schoolers. The proposed YouTube restrictions and adjacent technology curbs would extend that rollback into K-5 device use, gamified apps and standardized testing, the Journal reported.
A Wall Street Journal investigation earlier this year found that YouTube is inescapable in the American classroom, with some students exposed to hundreds of frequently inappropriate videos during school hours. Los Angeles has already banned student-led YouTube use and generative artificial intelligence tools for all grades, the Journal reported.
Krishnan said YouTube’s parent company deliberately courts young users. “Companies like Google know exactly what they are doing,” he said. “They know that if they can get our children and our schools hooked on their apps from a young age, it is a pathway to depend on them all the way through middle, high school and beyond.” Google has previously said school administrators control what students watch at school and that its tools allow a range of options to limit or block YouTube for students. The company declined to comment on the New York City Council members’ call.
Krishnan said he had spoken with parents who feel their efforts to limit screen time at home are undermined by what he called “dopamine hits” children get from gamified apps and YouTube at school. “Those concerns are magnified for our children whose brains are just forming, and their cognitive abilities are still developing,” he said.
Both council members said teachers have told them they feel pressure to use screens during the school day because standardized tests are digital, and that much educational technology has been put in front of children without evidence of effectiveness. “We have seen dips in test scores as a result,” Dinowitz said.
The council members plan to raise their proposals at an oversight hearing scheduled for Sept. 15, the Journal reported. New York City is the nation’s largest school district, serving about a million students, and the City Council serves as a key oversight body for the city Department of Education and its budget.