It's not on the afternoon.

Welcome to these New York City Council hearing for the Committee on Oversight Investigation, joined with the Committee on Education.

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Moving forward, no one is still approached today's chairs.

We are ready to begin.

Good afternoon, everyone.

I'm Councilmember Shaker Krishnan, Chair of the Committee on Oversight and Investigations.

And today, we will be looking at screen time and the use of digital devices in our New York City public schools.

I'd like to thank my fellow co-chair of this hearing, Councilmember Eric Dinowitz, Chair of the Committee on Education, for co-chairing this hearing with me today.

I'd also like to thank the representatives of the Department of Education, students, educators, unions, members of the public, and my council colleagues who have joined us here today, including Councilmember Shellman, Councilmember Ang, Councilmember Lewis, Councilman Morano, Councilmember Lee, Councilmember Delarosa, Councilmember Carr, and Councilmember Wong, and we are also honored to have joining us today too.

Our public advocate, Jamani Williams.

We're also joined by many parents and advocates who share the same concern about how much technology our students are relying on to learn in the classroom.

As parents, we all remember the dark days of 2020, where we sat over breakfast with our young kids in front of their Chromebooks.

We logged on to Zoom and Google Classroom, figured out how to use them after many tech issues locking on, figured out how to mute on Zoom, and then tried to finish up after all of that our cup of coffee while our children were learning on the screens.

And our children spent hours of the day, unfortunately learning on the screen.

After the pandemic ended, we were all happy and breathed a collective sigh of relief when they went back to school.

Our kids finally got to see their friends and their beloved teachers again.

And we would get to close those Chromebooks.

Or so we thought.

Parents, teachers, and advocates are rightly concerned that the use of ed tech products in our schools has become excessive and is distracting students from actual learning and undermining our teachers in the classroom when our students are distracted.

Studies have shown that digital devices disrupt student focus.

In fact, Google that owns YouTube has openly admitted that YouTube is, quote, unsafe and distracting.

Not to mention the health effects, disrupted sleep cycles, decrease in social coping skills, and eye strain.

All while big tech companies profit.

These massive companies are being awarded millions of dollars in contracts, gaining access to critical student data while still being vulnerable to security breaches, and creating future customers for themselves.

In one breath, these billion dollar companies are telling us that our kids will fall behind without their technology and then selling selling us their latest upgrade.

All of this at a time when there's an entire national conversation raging about the need for government regulation of AI, around the mental health and addictive harms of social media, not just on adolescents, but on us as adults.

Meanwhile, EdTech is trying to import all of their products into the classroom to addict children early on in their education.

From elementary school all the way through high school and beyond.

All to generate profits for themselves.

For students in the third through fifth grade, the policy recommends limiting the use of individual devices to 30 minutes, and for sixth through eighth grade, that limit is 45 minutes.

There are no screen time limits, however, for high school students, and the limits do not apply to standardized testing.

While this policy is a good and necessary first step, I believe we must do more.

And parents, teachers, and advocates have far more unanswered questions.

The reality is this.

And so much of that does not happen on a screen or with YouTube or with gamified apps.

It happens off of all of those things.

We will not let the greed of big technology companies get in the way of our children's future or our students' ability to succeed.

Before I conclude, I would like to thank the following council staff for their work on this hearing.

Our OI committee staff, Nicole Kata, Erica Cohen, Alex Yablan, and Owen Ketowski, and Oversight Investigation Division staff, Kevin Frick and Ryan Parkin.

Education Committee staff, Alejandro Carvajal, Chloe Rivera, Katie Selena, Andrew Lane Lawless, and Grace Samato.

And of course, my staff, Chanel Martinez, Hunter Divinegracia, Victoria Opperman, and everyone working here to make this hearing run as smoothly as possible.

Now I'll turn it over to my co-chair of this hearing, Councilmember Eric Dinowitz.

Thank you, Co-Chair Krishnan.

It's really a pleasure and honor to be here with you, someone who cares so deeply about the future of our city and the children in our school system.

Good afternoon, everyone.

I'm Councilmember Eric Dinowitz, former New York City public school student, former New York City Public School teacher, and now chair of the Committee on Education in our uh in our great city.

Uh and I'm pleased to be here to co-chair uh the commit the um the hearing to examine screen time and the use of digital devices in New York City public schools.

Six and a half years ago, New York City public schools shut their doors in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

I was in a classroom then.

Like every other teacher in our system, I started teaching through a screen almost overnight.

Teachers and students were asked to embrace learning management systems, video conferencing platforms, and educational software because the alternative was nothing.

But today, we have a choice.

Did students need to continue facing a screen all day instead of each other?

Research shows that excessive screen time in children is associated with increased risk of obesity, sleep disorders, and mental health conditions, including depression and anxiety, not to mention the challenges we as parents face when our children are engaged so much with their screens instead of with each other.

As a special education teacher, I also know what assistive technology can do for students with disabilities and English language learners, but for some of our most vulnerable students, we must also ensure that these tools are vetted and teachers received robust training lest these tools become substitutes for learning rather than an accommodation that opens up access to the classroom for our students.

Earlier this year, after mounting pressure from this committee, along with uh Chair Delarosa from the Committee on Technology, along with parents and advocates, Mayor Mamdani and Chancellor Samuels paused their original AI policy and announced a new AI and screen time policy for New York City schools.

This policy bans individual device use for children's 2K through second grade, recommends limited individual device use for students in grades three through three through five, 30 minutes a day, recommended time limits, individual device use for students grades six through eight, 45 minutes a day.

And of course, these recommended limits exempt screeners and other assessment tools.