New York’s classroom phone ban has revealed that many teenagers can’t tell the time on analog clocks
The ban on the use of smartphones in New York schools proved to be a great success: children concentrated better in class, socialized during breaks and even “pedestrian traffic” improved, without clashes or delays caused by walking with their eyes always focused on smartphones. But the teachers did a unexpected discovery: many students stare at the clock hanging on the wall as if it were an archaeological find because they no longer know how to read the analog clock. The hands don’t speak to them.
And the questions multiplied in class: “What time is it?”, “Is it long until the end of the hour?”, “How long until the bell rings?”. A paradox in the era in which the time is everywhere, always available, but almost exclusively in digital format.
For many teachers it was a moment of genuine surprise. Reading the analogue clock is a skill that is considered acquired, taught in elementary school together with multiplication tables and syllable division. And instead, in front of dials and hands, even high school students showed hesitation and uncertainty.
For years the smartphone has also silently played the role of temporal mediator: just a glance at the screen and the time is there, precise to the minute, without the need for interpretation. The hands, on the other hand, require little cognitive effort: understand the positions, translate them into numbers, mentally place them in time. A skill that, if not exercised, atrophies.
Madi Mornhinweg, an English teacher at a high school in Manhattan, confessed her profound frustration to Gothamist, a non-profit site dedicated to events in New York: «I had to re-explain the large hand and the small hand to my students…». And even the kids are aware of this gap. Farzona Yakuba, 15, said she was able to read the analog time, but that many of her classmates had difficulty: “I have the impression that many become lazy and always ask what time it is.”
Kris Perry, executive director of Children and Screens, Institute of Digital Media and Child Development, said it makes sense that teenagers growing up in an all-digital environment didn’t have to practice reading the analog clock. The question, he added, is whether this change amounts to «a cognitive downgrading or simply a replacement». Maybe kids can’t read the clock anymore simply because they don’t need it anymore. But a refresher is enough to recover a skill that ended up in the attic.
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December 28, 2025
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