Keeping AI Out of School Doesn't Prepare Kids for It
New York City just took one of the boldest steps in the country on AI and children. But the gaps it leaves are the ones that matters most.
Reposted from Psychology Today
On September 2, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels announced a one-year moratorium on student-facing generative AI for every child from 2-K through eighth grade. That’s nearly 600,000 students, roughly two-thirds of the district. Companion chatbots will be prohibited across all grades, including high school. The city is also placing new limits on screen time, with recommended caps of 30 minutes per day for students in grades 3–5 and 45 minutes for students in grades 6–8.
Developmentally, much of this makes sense.
Children need foundational skills before they can use a powerful tool like AI safely and wisely. They need opportunities to wrestle with a question, sit with not knowing, make mistakes, work through frustration, and build an argument before a machine builds one for them.
Those capacities are developed through effort. When a tool consistently removes that effort while these skills are still forming, it isn’t helping.
But the announcement leaves two big questions unanswered:
What happens when students go home?
And:
How are we preparing them for a world in which AI will be everywhere?
Removing AI From School Does Not Remove It From a Child’s Life
According to Common Sense Media’s 2026 census of 1,204 American children ages 9–17, 86 percent already use or interact with AI, and 24 percent do so every day. Among 9- to 12-year-olds—the very students New York’s moratorium is designed to protect—81 percent use AI, and 17 percent use it daily.
Most are not encountering AI at school either. More than three-quarters use AI on their own phone, computer, or tablet. Only 44 percent report using it on a school device.
Even if schools decide that students are not ready to use generative AI, that does not mean they are too young to learn about it. Just like learning about how the US government works does not mean a child is ready to be in Congress (this may be a bad example). It means we recognize that AI is an inevitable and ubiquitous part of the world kids need to learn about.
Parents can’t be expected to fill this gap either. According to the Common Sense survey, 44 percent of children say a parent or guardian has never talked with them about how to use AI safely. Even among daily AI users, more than a third have never had that conversation.
So a student can leave an AI-free classroom at three o’clock and walk into a world full of AI—with no teacher nearby and, in many cases, no parent who has ever talked about it.
And generative AI is only part of the picture. Artificial intelligence is already embedded in many of the technologies children use every day: YouTube and streaming recommendations, autocorrect and predictive text, navigation apps, search engines, filters, and learning platforms.
Long before children open a chatbot, algorithms are already deciding what they see, what gets recommended to them, and what information rises to the top. We cannot ignore this reality
AI Literacy Is Bigger Than Learning to Use AI
For high school students—the students not covered by the moratorium—New York plans to provide two AI literacy modules each year. Two sessions. Forty-five minutes each. It actually pains me to type this.
The city says those 90 minutes will address what AI is and is not, bias, risks, ethical considerations, and the impact of AI on careers and future skills.
Those are all important topics, but each one requires more than a single lesson. And all of them require foundational knowledge built over time in order for the lesson to stick.
Consider what else students need to learn:
How to verify AI output.
Only about half of children surveyed by Common Sense Media say a school or teacher has ever talked with them about how to determine whether information generated by AI is accurate or trustworthy. Verification is not a fact students memorize. It is a habit they develop through repeated practice.
Why AI often agrees with them.
AI systems are designed to be responsive and helpful. Students need to understand that a confident, agreeable answer is not necessarily a credible one.
Who owns what AI creates.
Copyright, intellectual property, attribution, and creative ownership have become more complicated in the age of generative AI. Students need traditional media literacy to understand why these questions matter.
What real human connection requires.
New York is right to prohibit companion chatbots for students. But banning a category of technology does not teach children why a machine can simulate empathy without actually caring about them—or what healthy human relationships require instead.
When not to use AI.
This may be one of the most important AI skills of all. Students should learn to ask: Will this tool help me think, or will it do my thinking for me? Knowing when to refrain from using technology is a skill, too.
How algorithms already shape their lives.
AI is increasingly involved in decisions about hiring, admissions, loans, benefits, policing, health, and more. To understand these systems later, students first need to understand concepts such as personal data, biometrics, profiling, recommendation systems, and algorithmic sorting.
That is civic literacy, not simply technology training.
What AI costs.
AI has a significant environmental footprint, including energy use, water consumption, and the rapidly growing infrastructure required to support data centers. Young people care deeply about environmental issues. They deserve to understand this part of the technology too.
What to do when something goes wrong.
Seventeen percent of children who use chatbots say one has shown them something they felt was inappropriate or not meant for someone their age. Of those children, more than half told no adult.
Knowing when and how to seek help is not instinctive. It is something children need to practice before they are in a difficult situation.
How to recognize synthetic media.
Deepfakes. Voice cloning. Nudify apps. AI-enabled sextortion. Students are already encountering these technologies. They need the media literacy skills to recognize manipulation, understand consent, and know what to do when synthetic media is used to harm someone.
What they give away when they type a prompt.
Children need to understand that a conversation with an AI system is not the same as a private conversation with a trusted person. Personal information about their bodies, health, family, relationships, or emotions should be treated with care.
Why health advice requires special caution.
More than half of young AI users surveyed by Common Sense Media report asking AI for information or advice about their health or body. Among 16- and 17-year-olds, that figure rises to 75 percent.
Young people need to know both the usefulness and the limits of these tools.
Why emotional dependency matters.
Thirty-seven percent of young AI users say they have used AI to discuss feelings or personal problems. Among those users, one in four say they sometimes feel AI understands them better than most people do. A ban on companion chatbots may reduce exposure in school. It does not teach students how to recognize an unhealthy relationship with technology.
And this is only a partial list. Ninety minutes a year cannot do this work.
AI literacy does not mean AI use.
New York’s moratorium gives educators an opportunity to protect childhood, preserve human-centered learning, and resist the rush to put powerful technology into students’ hands simply because it exists.
But keeping AI out of elementary and middle school classrooms cannot mean keeping AI education out too. In fact, this may be exactly the moment to teach it.
Students can learn how algorithms work without using a chatbot. They can investigate misinformation without generating it. They can practice protecting personal information without entering it into an AI tool. They can discuss bias, privacy, intellectual property, healthy relationships, environmental impact, and digital ethics without spending another minute looking at a screen.
For younger students especially, the strongest preparation may be decidedly low-tech: conversation, discussion, role-play, critical thinking, collaboration, media analysis, and opportunities to work through difficult questions with other human beings.
New York’s 600,000 children will spend this school year living in a world shaped by AI. Many will use it on their own devices, in their own bedrooms, without a teacher nearby and, for nearly half of them, without a parent who has ever talked with them about how to use it safely.
The question is not simply whether children should use AI in school.
It is whether we are giving them the knowledge, judgment, and human skills they will need to live with it everywhere else.
Diana Graber is the founder and director of Cyber Civics and Cyberwise. She is also the author of "Raising Humans in a Digital World: Helping Kids Build a Healthy Relationship with Technology" (HarperCollins Leadership).
