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February 20, 2025 – 4 min read
Smartphones are incredible devices that can keep us connected with friends, family, fun and the sum of the world’s knowledge. For all those reasons, mobile phones are also super important for teenagers, particularly after the upheaval of the last few years. Here are seven of the best smartphone apps for teenagers, covering the educational, the vital and the just plain fun – plus, top recommendations for the best mobile phones for teens.
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TikTok is such a rich platform of information and fun. The viral dances encourage coordination, exercise, and provide an entertaining activity to do with their friends. There are also plenty of TikToks with interesting science experiments and discussions about current issues. Their parents had MySpace and Facebook, but this generation has one-minute videos with better narrative arcs than Twilight!
Whether they want some help with the language they’re learning at school, to communicate better with their online international friends, or just watch anime or telenovelas without subtitles, Duolingo is a great way to learn a new language for free. Duolingo’s innovative program is used in some schools, but even if it’s not at your teenager’s school, it’s still worth trying out.
Duolingo not only teaches you phrases, but also throws you fun curveballs in the way of weird sentences, so you can understand how the words fit together, not just how to ask for a train ticket.
It’s almost shocking that a music creation app this powerful is completely free across Apple devices. Some of the most famous songs in the world have been created using the free samples in GarageBand – it’s that good for music creation, whether you can already play an instrument or not. It’s also a great way to open up songs and see how they work, encouraging creativity and a deeper understanding of what goes into what they hear on Spotify.
This is the perfect app for taking notes in lectures, classes and other instances where notes might be handy. It records all the audio and then puts a timestamp on any notes taken, so they can just click on that note and hear what the teacher was saying. It means they have a back-up of any key information, and they won’t have to listen to a whole one-hour class again just to get the relevant points they need to revise.
Being a teenager can be overwhelming. School expects so much, there are the usual social pressures, you’re falling in love for the first time, you can’t even rely on your body to stay the same, and then there’s the extra stress of the state of the world at present. The Calm app is full of guided meditations, soothing sounds, and other ways to calm down and lower the volume on their simmering internal anxiety. There’s a subscription option, but there’s also plenty of free relaxation tracks that are perfect at any age.
Life needs a soundtrack, and Apple Music is great for that. It works across iPhone and Android. The biggest benefit is that the playlists are made by actual human music experts, not algorithms, so they can make connections and suggestions that machines can’t. Plus, family subscriptions are very affordable, so the whole family can get in on the action with their own account for one price.
Canva is the little Aussie company that could, and they’ve made this app so you can, too. Canva is perfect for making any document or logo look like it was made by a professional graphic designer. You can go from boring text to engaging document in under an hour. It’s ideal for jazzing up school assignments, party invitations, flyers and documents for hobbies and sports teams.
If your teenager needs a new phone to take advantage of the best apps around, come see us in-store or online. The Good Guys offers the best deals, the best advice and the biggest range. We’ll help you find exactly what you need.
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