Google News is a competent news aggregator for adults, but it's a terrible choice for kids and even questionable for teens. Parents have been begging for parental controls and age-appropriate filtering since at least 2022, and Google hasn't delivered.

The core problem: news is inherently adult content. You can't aggregate headlines without surfacing stories about murder, war, sexual assault, political dysfunction, and disasters. The app makes no attempt to soften this or provide context. Common Sense Education straight-up says younger students need guidance because it's 'geared toward adults' with stories of 'dubious news-worthiness.'

For high schoolers doing civics or current events coursework, there's some value in learning to navigate real news sources—but honestly, curated teen news sites (like The New York Times' 'The Learning Network' or BBC Newsround) are better starting points.

The WISE score is low because this isn't designed for kids, doesn't pretend to be, and actively creates an unwholesome information environment even for adults (doom-scrolling, anyone?). If your teen needs news access, set it up together with explicit conversations about media literacy, and check in regularly about what they're seeing and how it's affecting them.