Although New York’s statewide smartphone ban has been largely successful in helping students focus in class and socialize more at lunch, it has also exposed an unexpected skill gap among students: Many struggle to read traditional clocks.

As of a June 2025 EdWeek tracker, New York is one of 21 states, as well as Washington D.C., that have banned smartphones ‘bell to bell’ in schools.

But, according to Gothamist, multiple teachers have stated that while the smartphone ban has been helpful, it has also exposed that many of their students can’t read analog clocks.

“That’s a major skill that they’re not used to at all,” said Tiana Millen, an assistant principal at Cardozo High School in Queens.

Madi Mornhinweg, who teaches high school English in Manhattan, said students constantly ask about the time.

“The constant refrain is ‘Miss, what time is it?’” she said. “It’s a source of frustration because everyone wants to know how many minutes are left in class. … It finally got to the point where I started saying ‘Where’s the big hand and where’s the little hand?’”

According to the education department, students learn to read clocks in first and second grade. Education department spokesperson Isla Gething said in a statement to Gothamist that the curriculum teaches terms including “o’clock,” “half-past,” and “quarter-to” in early elementary years.

“At NYCPS, we recognize how essential it is for our students to tell the time on both analog and digital clocks,” Gething said. “As our young people are growing up in an increasingly digital world, no traditional time-reading skills should be left behind.”

However, Cheyenne Francis, 14, said that her peers have lost the skill from lack of use.

“They just forgot that skill because they never used it, because they always pulled out their phone,” Francis said. She added that broken or incorrectly set clocks in school buildings don’t help, Gothamist reported.

Travis Malekpour, who teaches English and math at Cardozo, called the skill “underutilized.” He also stated that he’s tried to integrate telling time and managing calendars into some of his algebra lessons, as a way to keep the skill active in students’ lives.

Furthermore, Kris Perry, the executive director of Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development, said it makes sense that teens raised in a digital environment haven’t practiced analog clock-reading.

The question, she told Gothamist, is whether the shift amounts to “a cognitive downgrade or just a replacement.” She noted that brain scans have shown that holding books and handwriting generally lead to more brain activity than reading and typing on screens.

Yet some educators argue the trade-off isn’t entirely one-sided. Many schools have sophisticated and successful coding and robotics programs, and teachers sometimes turn to students for technology help.

Mornhinweg said students recently walked her through new software when she struggled to open a PDF.

“I was freaking out and they were like, ‘Miss it’s fine, this is what you do.’ I felt really old,” she said.

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