New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani just announced a one-year ban of generative AI tools in public schools for students up to eighth grade. The legislation takes effect during the 2026-2027 school year and will impact around 600,000 students.
“This moratorium is a commitment to getting the future right,” Mayor Mamdani said. “We will embrace new technology, but only when it serves our students.” New York Governor Kathy Hochul added that the state “has been leading the way in our efforts to keep kids focused on learning and growing — not clicking and scrolling.”
Mayor Mamdani said this move was made to protect “human connection” in classrooms, suggesting that kids should develop problem-solving and social skills via teachers and peers instead of chatbots.
Throughout the one-year ban, studies will be conducted to analyze the technology’s impact on children. This coalition of educators, parents and elected officials will recommend next steps after that.
This doesn’t impact high schools, and a number of those classrooms will be allowed to participate in various AI pilot programs, though they will be closely monitored. All high school students will receive twice-yearly lessons “designed to help them think critically about AI before they begin to rely on it.”
Teachers will be able to use gen AI for lesson planning and administrative work, as long as the tools comply with public school safety standards. Additionally, there will be exceptions made for assistive technology usage by kids with disabilities, multilingual learners and students participating in career readiness programs, including computer science.
Today’s policy also introduces new screen time guidelines for children. This includes daily caps of 30 minutes for many elementary school students and 45 minutes for middle schoolers. It’s worth noting that these are just guidelines. Households can do whatever they want.
This crackdown comes as NYC parents grow increasingly concerned about the impact AI is having on their kids. Advocacy groups have pushed for this moratorium and more than half of City Council members signed a letter urging the Mayor and the Department of Education to stop expanded AI use in classrooms.
United Federation of Teachers (UFT) President Michael Mulgrew recently told ABC News that AI was a “dangerous thing” and that “parents are getting very, very upset with AI because all they hear are these horror stories” and “they’re rightfully protective of their children.”
To that end, NYC isn’t the only place instituting these kinds of bans. Norway did something similar and Italy passed legislation that requires parental consent in order for kids under 14 to use the tech. The American Senate and House have been discussing a bill that would require AI companies to implement an age-verification process and ban them from providing chatbots to minors. We’ll have to see what happens there, though the industry has spent a whopping $41.8 million on lobbying in just the first half of 2026 alone.
“The tech industry wants us to believe that AI-powered early education is not only inevitable, but necessary. We do not see it that way,” Mayor Mamdani said in a statement ahead of today’s announcement.
