I find it interesting commenters are suggesting the New Yorker, Atlantic, and Economist considering they all have political content…especially during the last election cycle.
There was nothing special about the last election cycle in that regard. They always have political content.
I think my kiddo and I like the Economist more since published in the UK. We prefer that view of world affairs.
For a STEM kid, how about Make Magazine? Lots of fun projects, some quite fast and easy.
WSJ can be of interest to some kids as well, depending on the individual.
I like the Economist because it has very concise news features which are a straight forward synopsis of current events. A great “week at-a-glance” view. Plus a good dose of “humanity”–arts, books, what and whomever. I think of it as a less conservative “more global” WSJ in weekly form.
My first thought was Runner’s World–because it has interesting articles for all ages. So my second thought is: a sports magazine or a special-interest magazine. My daughter and I both read Outside–she plans to actually do some of the adventures described, and I just like reading about them.
Outside has some really good articles.
I suggest taking her to Barnes and Noble and letting her pick up some magazines to take home. Find out what she likes. I bought DD a Teen Vogue and Seventeen for a sleepover, and her friends looked at me like I had three heads. Apparently, her peer group doesn’t read magazines.
Mad Magazine is still very much in print, and my DH loves to consider himself an idiot for subscribing.
I admit I still get a chuckle or a groan every now and then when I pick it up.
How about Consumer Reports?
But I agree with those suggesting you see what interests your kid. My kids would have had zero interest in reading The Economist.
Popular Mechanics is a fun read.
The Week. It’s a synthesis of news articles from other publications. It is readable, entertaining, balanced, and for people who want to delve more deeply into a topic, it tells the source of each story, so you can go look up the Economist, etc.
My kids really loved The Economist. It is really a lot better than Time or Newsweek ever were, and just thumbing through it reminds you how parochial most U.S. publications are. The Economist covers stuff happening in Africa, Eastern Europe, and South America even if there are no dying babies involved. I am pretty certain, by the way, that the US edition of The Economist is basically published here, although they go to some pains to preserve a whiff of Englishness about it. Spelling “color” as “colour,” and the like.
The New Yorker is an interesting choice these days for a kid who doesn’t like reading about politics. I think the share of its pages devoted to politics, and specifically to Donald J. Trump and the many threats he poses to the American Republic (not to mention life on Earth), has gotten way out of proportion. It’s like David Remnick hasn’t gotten inured at all to the feeling of nausea and disbelief when he wakes up in the morning and remembers that Donald Trump is President. He wakes up, and he needs to sound the alarm again. It’s getting old – and I agree with him 100% about Trump, and love The New Yorker to death. (One or both of us has had a subscription continuously since 1975.)
My kids don’t read physical magazines anymore, but they both read The Economist online, and one reads The New Yorker online religiously. The articles have gotten shorter since the William Shawn era, by the way. It’s no longer really impossible to read it all the way through every week (not that I ever do), and my kids don’t get it when we joke about reading 100,000-word articles on grain.