Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul today held a roundtable discussion with local educators and stakeholders in Western New York as part of her statewide listening tour focused on addressing smartphone use in schools. This follows several recent sessions in the Capital Region, Long Island and Southern Tier, and will continue with additional roundtables with key stakeholders over the coming months. As the Governor has emphasized, stakeholder engagement will play a key role as she develops a statewide policy proposal on smartphones in schools that will be announced later this year.
VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format.
AUDIO of the Governor’s remarks is available.
PHOTOS of the event are available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below
Great to be back in Western New York. No doubt about it. Back in Bills country. And I'm so delighted to be joined by some of my partners in government — the people that represent this district with such heart. I want to start with our Majority Leader, Crystal Peoples-Stokes, who's here today to listen, because what we're talking about is if there's going to be a next step — which I expect there will be — and our Legislature is very important in this.
So, I want to thank her, and I want to thank Senator Sean Ryan for joining us today. I appreciate your attendance here today. Assemblymember Bill Conrad, thank you for coming here as well. And also, our Superintendent of Ken-Ton. It's a school district I'm very familiar with, and I want to thank Superintendent Sabatino Cimato for hosting us and our friends from Ken-Ton, Williamsville, Buffalo, Northtown and a lot of the school districts. We have a lot of you represented here today and I'm really delighted you could take the time. Also, our representatives from the regional NYSUT team. Thank you. Thank you for being here. We need to hear your voices. And Danielle McMullen, the Assistant Secretary for Education.
What we're doing here today is something I've been focused on for the last two years. Since I became Governor, we were just getting through the pandemic. I started asking parents and seeing children in a very different place — I have teenage nieces and nephews, I have my own children — and it started occurring to me, we need to start finding out what happened to our young people during the pandemic. How is their mental health? Because the numbers were starting to be frightening. There were statistics showing that the number of children suffering from anxiety and depression and dark thoughts, and even one out of three teenage girls contemplating suicide, was something that was very abnormal. These were new numbers for us to have to grasp and comprehend.
So, I started having roundtables on mental health, going to high schools, middle schools all over the State, sitting down with young people and just asking them, you know, “What's going on? What are you hearing in school? How are you feeling?” And when I came to the stark reality that while adults had moved on from the pandemic — you know, it was two years later, rear view mirror, we dealt with it, we're done with it — it has still had a hold on our young people. This was a — when you think about statistically — a larger percentage of their life for young people than it was for adults, right? So, this is a large part of their existence. Teenagers who so rely on, you know — the milestones, you know, the graduations from middle school and high school and the proms and the gathering with their friends and going to football games together — they lost all that. And their only connection with the reality to them was their cell phone. Their device. Teachers did their very best to try and teach young people remotely. They put their heart and soul in it, and it had to be so difficult for them. And I would say that was not a resounding success for teachers, parents or the students.
But the young people no longer found human connection, but connection to others through social media and became far more reliant on it than they had been in the past. Couple that with the fact that social media companies figured out that they could use addictive algorithms to bombard young people with messaging that would hold their attention, because they based this on knowledge they had collected about these young people unbeknownst to them.
So, they're out there collecting data and knowing what they can push to a young person and hold them in even closer. The young person says or mentions suicide online, they’re not getting bombarded with places to get suicide help or adult counselors or positive messages. They literally can be shown ways to commit suicide within a very short time on social media. That's the truth.
So, it was not a positive outcome for our kids. We took this on. I thank my partners in the Legislature for working with me, and our Attorney General, Tish James, for coming up with the first of the nation legislation to rein in social media companies and say that you can no longer send out these algorithms without parental permission. It's still being developed right now by the attorney general — the regulations.
We also said, “You can no longer monetize our children's mental health. You can't collect this data and sell it to other companies so they also can bombard young people based on their interests.” So, we stopped that and also said, parents should have a right to be able to turn off and switch off their children's cell phones and let them get some sleep.
Our kids are sleep deprived. I talked to teenage nieces. I said, “Why are you up all night on your cell phones? Aren't the people you're talking to in bed?” Turns out they have networks around the world. They make friends with other kids in other countries and they're literally talking to young people in different time zones who are not in bed at that time.
So, this is the reality of our kids. And meanwhile, we have 72 percent of teachers surveyed who say this is a huge distraction. Cell phones in classrooms are a huge barrier to their ability to teach and hold the attention of our students. It's nothing any of us had to deal with when we were growing up. My kids are in their thirties — it was just starting, but nowhere near what it is now. And it's up to us as adults to have the conversations as I have. I was in Albany, Long Island, we did Binghamton yesterday, now I'm here to listen to the people who this will most affect: our superintendents, our principals, our teachers in the classroom, parents, PTA. And I was really proud that I sat with Melinda Person, the head of NYSUT for the State, who said, “We’re with you on doing something about this. You know, we cannot do this. This can no longer be sustained. It is just too hard.”
And lastly, I'll say this: I've long believed that jobs as parents and educators is not to raise children, but to raise adults. We want to launch them as fully functioning, adjusted individuals into the world and into the workplace, so they can understand while they're younger what it's like to share, what it's like to work collaboratively, what it's like to make eye contact and develop relationships and friendships. This is not happening today.
Young people at lunchtime are not talking to the person sitting next to them, they're not talking to someone far away, they're not even making eye contact or connecting. This is not good for their mental health. It's not good for them to emerge as fully functioning adults. And my view is, as I heard from one young person, I said, “Why can't you just stop?” She says, “You have to save us from ourselves. We can't stop. We cannot stop holding this” and they're holding it — onto their cell phone — while they're sitting there talking to the Governor of New York. They could not put their phones down because it is addicting. And many adults know that as well.
So, I'm here today to listen. I'm proud that the Superintendent has agreed to host us. I want to have him kick off the conversation. But I have learned so much from doing this that has helped shape my views very strongly now, even more so than when I launched this journey because I'm hearing a cry for help from our young people, and we are the ones who can help them. And that's what I want to make sure we end up doing. So Superintendent, thank you for your time today and being willing to kick off the conversation.