NYC Schools Won’t See Full Cellphone Ban Yet, Mayor Eric Adams Says

A photo illustration of social media apps on a phone in New York City on March 13, 2024. Photo Illustration by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

New York City will not be imposing a no-cellphone-in-school policy anytime soon, Mayor Eric Adams said.

During an Aug. 27 press briefing, the mayor reaffirmed his support for keeping students off their devices at school but said that his administration would need more time to work on the details if it were to become an official policy for the nation’s largest school system.

“What we find is that the overwhelming number of people would like to get the distractions out of school,” he said. “How to do it is another question. Do you take the phones? Do you lock them up? Do you put them in pouches? What happens if a phone is missing? What happens if a child refuses to cooperate?”

A growing number of states and school districts across the country are moving toward or have already implemented cellphone bans, citing widespread concerns over the negative effects of cellphone and social media use on children’s academic performance and mental health. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is also soliciting public input for a statewide ban.

For now, every school in the Big Apple sets its own cellphone policy that students are expected to follow. In preparation for the return to classrooms on Sept. 5, hundreds of schools have tightened their policies.

Many schools are using the services of Yondr, a company that produces magnetized cloth pouches to lock up students’ cellphones during the school day. Those pouches can cost $25 to $30 per student, and there remains the question whether the city will provide schools with extra funding to help them collect cellphones.

“Who pays for the pouches? What mechanisms are being used?” Adams said at the press briefing. “There will be some action in the upcoming school year. But the extent of a full ban, we’re not there yet.”

“The previous administration attempted to do this, and they had to roll back,” he added, referencing a citywide cellphone ban instituted by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and abolished by his successor, Bill de Blasio. “I don’t want to go backwards after we make a determination.”

Under Bloomberg, New York City schools banned cellphones and other electronic devices, such as iPads, from school property. For many students, this meant paying $1 a day—or about $180 a year—to mobile storage trucks or local bodegas to keep their phones outside school grounds.

In 2015, de Blasio lifted the ban, which he said was “out of touch with modern parenting.”

“Parents should be able to call or text their kids,” de Blasio said at the time, adding that the ban perpetuated what he called “inequity” because it was enforced using metal detectors mostly at schools that tend to serve students of low-income, non-white neighborhoods.

Bloomberg, in an opinion piece published on his namesake news site in June, defended his policy and urged the city to bring it back.

“The ban was one of many policy changes that allowed us to transform the school system in ways that dramatically raised student achievement levels,” the media tycoon said. “Although it was undone by our successor, public support for mobile-phone bans has grown nationally—and across party lines.

“Of course, some kids and parents will complain and argue. My advice to elected officials and school boards is simple: Don’t buy it. There’s too much at stake.”