New York City Council members are pushing to ban student YouTube access on school devices and eliminate individual digital devices for kindergarten through fifth grade. The proposal arrives weeks after Mayor Zohran Mamdani barred generative artificial intelligence tools for students in 2-K through eighth grade citywide.
Council Members Shekar Krishnan and Eric Dinowitz, who chair the Oversight and Investigations Committee and the Education Committee respectively, are calling for a YouTube ban in schools, according to The Wall Street Journal. Krishnan and Dinowitz said they are calling for the YouTube ban because of declining test scores and mounting complaints from parents and teachers, the Journal reported. Beyond the YouTube restriction, the proposal also calls for banning gamified educational apps in addition to removing 1-to-1 devices for the youngest students, a rollback that goes well beyond a single app restriction.
Test Scores Cited as Justification
Test Scores Cited as Justification
A report described a seventh-grade student in Wichita accessing more than 13,000 YouTube videos on a school-issued device over three months. Some of the videos involved gun culture and explicit material, and the report examined YouTube use across American classrooms.
A Precedent-Setting System
New York City Public Schools is the nation's largest public school system, according to AP News. The article examines what the city's policies could mean for classroom software rules nationwide. The mayor's office has described its own AI moratorium, announced in early September, as the most expansive prohibition of its kind in the country, AP News reported.
The Council's proposal also lands just weeks after Mamdani's administration terminated a $3.5 million monthly T-Mobile contract that supplied cellular internet access for school Chromebooks, a move Hoodline reported left principals scrambling to adjust device connectivity right before classes began, affecting thousands of low-income students who relied on district-funded cellular access.
Who Actually Controls the Classroom
Krishnan and Dinowitz owe their committee posts to Council Speaker Julie Menin, who appointed Dinowitz to chair the Education Committee and Krishnan to chair Oversight and Investigations. But introducing legislation and holding hearings is different from setting policy, leaving implementation questions unresolved.
That panel now leans toward City Hall. Mamdani appointed 13 new members to the 24-seat Panel for Educational Policy over the summer, giving City Hall a majority on the body. That mayoral majority could shape official DOE policy changes and contract terms for the 2026-2027 school year. Hoodline's earlier coverage detailed how that mayoral majority gives City Hall — not the Council — control over how any citywide tech rules would actually get implemented.
A Wider Conversation
New York's debate is unfolding alongside other efforts to limit classroom screens. Statewide bell-to-bell cellphone bans and device restrictions took effect this month across New Jersey districts including Newark, part of a broader push to restrict personal and school-issued screens during instruction time.
The proposal addresses concerns about screen distractions and algorithmic rabbit holes pulling students' attention, while also raising questions about classroom use of YouTube.
