How we rate apps and platforms.
Every app profile on The Rundown gets one of four risk labels. Here is what each one means.
Low
The app’s defaults are reasonable for most families. Small setup adjustments may be worth making, but there is no urgent action required.
Watch
The app is generally fine but has specific features or settings that commonly cause problems for tweens and teens. Worth reviewing before allowing it.
High
The app has meaningful risks that many parents will want to actively mitigate. Expect to change default settings, set limits, or have direct conversations.
Urgent
Active, ongoing harm patterns we recommend parents address immediately — often by blocking, removing, or closely supervising use.
How we decide
Ratings reflect the editorial judgment of The Rundown, informed by published research, the app’s own disclosures, observed behavior across our reviews, and feedback from the parent community.
We weight three things heavily: defaults (what does a typical 12-year-old encounter without any parental setup?), bypass surface (how easily can a motivated teenager defeat the controls that exist?), and parental visibility (can a parent see what their kid is actually doing on the platform?).
A rating is revisited when the platform changes meaningfully — a new feature launch, a defaults change, or new evidence from the parent community. Every profile shows when it was last updated — or when it was added, if nothing has needed changing since — so you can see how current the one you are reading is.
Why the answer changes with your child’s age
The four labels rate the app. They do not answer whether that app suits a particular child, which is a different question and often a different answer. An app can be well built and still be the wrong app for a six-year-old.
So every profile also answers it for four age bands, and you will see a red “Not recommended” row under a Low or Worth-watching headline fairly often. That is not a contradiction — it is the second question being answered.
That per-age answer is computed, not written by hand, and it is the same answer everywhere it appears: the age rows on a profile, the “is it safe for a 10-year-old” pages, and the safety check. It weighs the app’s rating together with the facts recorded on its profile: how the app’s own minimum age compares with that band, whether strangers can make contact, whether location is shared, whether messages disappear, and how much a parent can see.
Two rules sit above the rest. An app rated Urgent is not recommended at any age. An app rated High never reads as low-risk at any age. Otherwise the concerns that apply to that specific band decide it, and each row names the one that did — so you can judge whether it applies to your child rather than taking the label on trust.
See the rated apps in the full app library. If a rating reads wrong to you, the fastest way to flag it is via the submit form.