News App Picker for Seniors
Eight calmer ways to read the news, with prices and what each one is best at.
The news on Facebook and X is not really the news
What you see on Facebook and X is curated by an algorithm whose goal is to make you angry enough to keep scrolling. That is not the same as being informed. Go DIRECTLY to a real news app — pick one or two below — and skip the outrage feed entirely. You will feel calmer within a week.
Pick a source
Apple News+
13/mo (covers 300+ publications)
Best for
iPhone or iPad readers who want one bill instead of five.
What is great
- Bundles WSJ, The Atlantic, People, Time, National Geographic, Bloomberg, and 300+ more.
- Audio narration of long stories — listen while you walk or cook.
- Daily digest curated by human editors, not an algorithm.
Watch out for
- iPhone / iPad / Mac only. Not on Android or Windows.
- WSJ access through Apple News+ is missing some specialty video content.
Bonus: news in audio form
Pocket Casts (free, with a 4/mo Plus tier) is a clean podcast app for iPhone and Android. Use it for The Daily (NYT), Up First (NPR), What’s News (WSJ), and Post Reports (Washington Post). Listening while you cook breakfast is a calmer start to the day than scrolling.
Yahoo News (free with ads) is fine as a quick headline scan, but it pulls from many sources of varying quality — treat it as a starting point, not a destination.