Time got away from them!
New York City teachers have found that scores of teenagers can’t read traditional clocks after a cellphone ban in schools statewide — because students figured the skill would be useless in the digital era, according to a report.
“The constant refrain is ‘Miss, what time is it?’” said Madi Mornhinweg, who teaches high school English in Manhattan.
“It’s a source of frustration because everyone wants to know how many minutes are left in class,” she told Gothamist. “It finally got to the point where I started saying, ‘Where’s the big hand and where’s the little hand?’”
Many tech-minded teens have no clue what time it is during the course of the school day because classrooms generally only have analog clocks on the walls, teachers told the outlet.
“That’s a major skill that they’re not used to at all,” Tiana Millen, an assistant principal at Cardozo High School in Queens, said. “They don’t know how to read the clocks.”
Some students said they learned how to read clocks in first grade but later forgot the basic skill because it was an antiquated practice.
“They just forgot that skill because they never used it, because they always pulled out their phone,” Cheyenne Francis, 14, who attends Midwood High School in Brooklyn, told Gothamist.
“I know how to read a clock,” she added. “The only time I guess I would struggle is if the time is wrong on the clock. Because sometimes they don’t set the proper time.”
New York’s statewide smartphone ban went into effect Sept. 4 for the 2025-26 school year, with few other downsides, according to educators.
Big Apple teachers said the ban has helped kids focus in class, socialize better at lunch and move more swiftly through hallways.
In an ironic twist, it also helps them get to class on time — even though they can’t read the clocks.
Parents and teachers have long blamed technology for a range of lapsed skills — from poor penmanship to short attention spans — even as Gen-Z runs technological laps around older folks.
“At NYCPS (New York City Public Schools), we recognize how essential it is for our students to tell the time on both analog and digital clocks,” city Department of Education spokesperson Isla Gething told Gothamist.
“As our young people are growing up in an increasingly digital world, no traditional time-reading skills should be left behind.”
Kids are taught to master terms including “o’clock,” “half-past” and “quarter-to” in early elementary years, school officials said.
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