10 Apps to Add to Your Kid’s First Phone (That Aren’t Social Media) (2024)

Designed like a game, Duolingo (iOS and Android) offers daily mini lessons for close to 40 languages, including Spanish, Chinese, and Klingon. Though the jury’s out on how effective it is for mastering another language, it does make building familiarity with a new language fun and rewarding. You’re encouraged to keep up your streak by returning to the app each day—for better or worse, my teenage daughter frequently asks for more screen time just so she doesn’t break hers.

We’d be remiss not to include our favorite puzzle app. The NYT Games app (iOS and Android) offers a collection of brain-exercising options, including Sudoku, Connections, and the Crossword. You can also keep track of your stats (such as your solve rate) and compete against your friends in the Mini Crossword.

Wirecutter’s pick for the best free photo editing app, Snapseed (iOS and Android), comes with a range of easy-to-learn tools that let you sharpen, brighten, and enhance your photos. For those who don’t have Instagram but want to play with their images, Snapseed offers a series of filters as well as other special effects such as “vintage” and “grunge” that can be applied to their photos. The ad-free app is made by Google, but it doesn’t require you to use Google Photos or upload your pictures to Google.

Headspace (iOS and Android), our pick for the best meditation app, comes with a series of guided meditation courses (broadly categorized as Meditation, Sleep, Movement, and Music) that can be soothing and instructive for teens juggling a lot of stress. It also offers sessions that address specific issues, such as “Finding Focus,” “In Pain SOS,” and “Creative Writing.” Headspace offers individual or family annual subscriptions. We also recommend a couple of free options in our guide to meditation apps.

As their responsibilities increase, a productivity app like TickTick (iOS and Android) can help tweens and teens manage their growing list of projects, deadlines, and other obligations. Our pick for the best free To-Do List app, TickTick helps them organize and prioritize that list independently by visualizing what’s urgent and important—and what’s not.

Part self-care, part productivity, part digital pet, Finch (iOS and Android) lets you jot down daily goals—make your bed, drink water, do your homework—and rewards you when you complete them. As you take care of your tasks, reflect on your feelings, and send positive vibes to your friends (my daughter and her friends send each other preset messages like “high five” or “encouragement”), you collect digital currency that you can spend on decorating your pet’s home and buying them clothes and accessories. Along the way, Finch offers nuggets of encouragement and advice. And don’t worry: You can’t kill your digital pet, even if you neglect it for days (or weeks).

PlantNet Plant Identification (iOS and Android) and Seek by iNaturalist (iOS and Android) are great apps for curious kids as they’re out and about (or just in their own backyard). Using the phone’s camera, the PlantNet app—our pick for the best plant identification app—can quickly and accurately distinguish thousands of species of flora. Similarly, Seek taps into the iNaturalist database to help you pinpoint and learn more about local wildlife, plants, and even poop. Find out the taxonomy of a particular flower, the seasonality of a specific bird, or if others in your neighborhood have also spotted the same species of snake. We also like the iNaturalist app (iOS and Android), which lets budding citizen scientists contribute to projects.

Whether for a research project or another homework assignment, Adobe Scan (iOS and Android), our pick for the best mobile scanning app, can be a useful tool for students. The free and easy-to-use app scans, saves, and creates PDFs of important documents, from a page in a book to a permission slip.

Wavelength (iOS and Android) isn’t a game you can play by yourself. A mobile version of one of our favorite board games, it requires you to connect and chat with another person (or more) as you weigh questions such as, “Are kangaroos cute?” Senior staff writer Melanie Pinola plays it with her teenage daughter remotely when they have lunch or other breaks at the same time. Each round is short (as little as 15 minutes) and the prompts—interesting and sometimes outrageous—can lead to long conversations even after the game is over.

This article was edited by Kalee Thompson and Catherine Kast.