Parents' Guide to Words With Friends

Words With Friends Poster Image

Common Sense Media Review

By Carla Thornton , based on child development research. How do we rate?

age 14+

Superb Scrabble clone; open chat makes it for teens and up.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 14+?

Any Positive Content?

Parent and Kid Reviews

age 14+

Based on 26 parent reviews

Parents say the mobile app has become increasingly frustrating due to the prevalence of ads, scams, and inconsistent gameplay, which distract from its original appeal as a word challenge. Users express disappointment with the game's focus on monetization, the introduction of unqualified words, technical issues, and a lack of safety measures against scammers, ultimately leading many to consider deleting the app in search of better options.

  • ad overload
  • scam concerns
  • gameplay issues
  • monetization frustration
  • word validity problems
  • safety measures lacking
Summarized with AI

age 11+

Based on 9 kid reviews

Privacy Rating Warning

  • Personal information is sold or rented to third parties.
  • Personal information is shared for third-party marketing.
  • Personalised advertising is displayed.
  • Data are collected by third-parties for their own purposes.
  • User's information is used to track and target advertisements on other third-party websites or services.
  • Unclear whether this product creates and uses data profiles for personalised advertisements.

What's It About?

Much like in the board game Scrabble, kids playing Words With Friends make words out of seven letter tiles, each with their own point value, and place them on a grid gameboard. Taking turns with another player on the same device or online (friends or random opponents), kids continue to draw letter tiles and build words crossword style until one of the player uses all of his/or her tiles. Kids can use the point value of their letters and the special squares on the board (doubling or tripling a letter or word's points) to maximize scores.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say ( 26 ):
Kids say ( 9 ):

WORDS WITH FRIENDS is crossword nirvana with its option to play several games simultaneously. This game doesn't have as many cheat options as Scrabble, something we missed sometimes. For each game, only two people can compete against each other. But Words is also more forgiving, with no time limits for moves, so if life gets hectic the game will still be there when you return.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Encourage kids to play with people they know in real life -- including you! If your kid plays against random opponents, make he or she knows to keeps personal information private, and to resign from any game where a random opponent behaves inappropriately.

  • Encourage kids to look up the meanings of words they're unfamiliar with.

App Details

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by

Words With Friends Poster Image

You May Also Like...

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

See how we rate