Starting with the 2025-2026 school year, New York state's Distraction-Free Schools Law prohibits unsanctioned use of smartphones and other internet-enabled personal devices on K-12 school grounds "from bell to bell."
In today's attention economy, advertising messages must vie with an ever-increasing number of stimuli to be noticed by consumers. As T.S. Eliot famously put it, we are "distracted from distraction by distraction."
Eye contact, once a cornerstone of human connection, is becoming increasingly rare in our screen-dominated lives. The beeps, alerts, and endless digital distractions have shifted our gaze away from the eyes of others and into the glow of our devices.