news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

Fast Reading

■

as of now, duolingo has nearly 100 million monthly active users. from subways, elevators, cinemas to concerts, users can be seen everywhere using their mobile phones to check in on duolingo.

■

although it is an app for learning purposes, you can see many shadows of games in duolingo.

■

the secret of duolingo's addictiveness is that it is simpler and more fun than educational apps, and provides a greater sense of reward and accomplishment than entertainment apps.

author | gao yue

cover source | documentary "smart trap"

sitting in the screening room of the movie "catching dolls", zhong shuyan (pseudonym) felt as if his head was hit when he saw the son of ma chenggang, the richest man in xihong city, "accidentally" encounter two foreign teachers asking for directions.

she suddenly remembered that she had not checked in on the duolingo app today.

in the dark cinema, she took out her cell phone, turned off the sound, and hunched over behind the front seat the entire time. she only breathed a sigh of relief after completing the day's clock-in task.

this "click" moment can happen at any time on the subway, in the elevator, and on the roadside. at music festivals, concerts, and even in the long queues at disney and the chengdu giant panda base, you can also see people holding their phones and checking in. some people check in on the toilet in the hotel bathroom, "not practicing speaking, and turning the volume down to the lowest." actress cai wenjing forgot to check in after 308 consecutive days of winning, and her record was reset to zero. this became her "saddest day."

duolingo, an educational app from the united states, is "hard-controlling" 100 million people.

being "controlled" by duolingo

every duolingo user has several memorable extreme check-in scenes in their memory.

cynthia (pseudonym), who has lived in spain, the netherlands and other countries, registered with her family of four to use up the family membership quota. after that, she often found that she could not call anyone after dinner was ready, and could only hear the sound of clocking in from all directions. her daughter studied latin, greek, french, german and dutch, and her mother studied english.

late one night, cynthia's husband suddenly woke up, sat on the bed and yelled that he hadn't clocked in yet. he turned on the light, held his phone, and ticked the deadline.

the obsession with checking in is ingrained in the dna of duolingo users.

after using duolingo for 50 days, dutch student muzi (pseudonym) had her card disconnected. she felt it was a pity, "all my previous efforts were wasted." she was determined not to disconnect again, and she kept her phone in her hands during her trip to berlin, germany, even when she was drinking in a bar at night.

the first thing su xiaoxiao (pseudonym), an employee of an internet company, does after get off work every day is to clock in on duolingo. everything else has to wait. once, she rejected her boyfriend’s video call invitation because she clocked in, thinking that she would call him back in a few minutes. when she finished, she looked at her phone and found that 40 minutes had passed. her boyfriend was surprised, “why did you disappear for so long?”

duolingo users who have been manipulated have also had experiences of "hard confrontation" with others.

at the top of the game, cynthia wanted to compete for the first place in the group leaderboard. her competitor was a grandfather whose profile picture looked like he was in his 70s or 80s, but he had been learning spanish for two or three years.

in order to surpass her opponent, cynthia spent one or two hours studying almost every night, increasing the content from one lesson to one unit, and even longer when there were double points. with such intensity, she believed that she had a sure win.

one day, she suddenly found that her opponent had surpassed her and added a mocking expression after her username. at that moment, cynthia was completely aroused by the desire to win. she spent a whole day to double her experience points and finally won.

su xiaoxiao also competed for the medal of achievement awarded for the first place in the group level. for several days, she and her opponent were like in an extra-long swimming competition, chasing each other, unable to pull away from each other, and unable to tell who was the winner. for this reason, she made a post on the social platform to express her determination, announcing that she would give up her weekend rest and "stay up all night to win the medal."

but the other party did not come online on the weekend and gave the medal to su xiaoxiao.

it turned out that this post was pushed to the opponent by big data. the opponent left a comment under the post: "this is the first time i have met such a competitive person. i almost collapsed."

on social platforms, users are everywhere sharing their achievements and complaining about their check-ins. their comment areas have become friend-making areas—asking to add friends and team up to complete group tasks.

su xiaoxiao competes with her friends for the ranking; source: photo provided by the interviewee

more like a game than a game

su xiaoxiao only posts two kinds of content on her social media homepage: one is her league of legends record, and the other is the duolingo rankings.

in her eyes, duolingo is more addictive than league of legends.

it’s like a game disguised as a learning game. on duolingo, which claims that you can learn 40 foreign languages ​​by playing, you can see the shadows of many games.

educational apps usually allow users to create their own study plans, but duolingo is different. it designs the learning process into a game of unlocking levels.

as soon as you open the first lesson, the game begins. log in to the app every day to get gems, similar to the happy beans in the landlord game. completing tasks can gain experience, and sometimes a purple medicine bottle of "double experience" will drop.

duolingo's "double experience" purple medicine bottle source: xiaohongshu

just like in the candy crush saga game, when you get “unlimited energy” you want to keep playing, every time you get double experience, su xiaoxiao can’t stop on her journey of clearing levels, and it’s no problem for her to clear several units in a row.

the npcs in duolingo are similar to the characters in the hit game "the legend of zelda", such as the green owl named "dor" and the "zhajie" with purple hair who always looks at people with the side of her eyes.

every time you answer a question correctly, "duoer" will jump out to encourage you, "great!" "that's great!" and it will be accompanied by vibration and sound feedback, which is similar to the "excellent" in the candy crush game.

by completing levels and checking in for "winning streaks" day after day, users can unlock different medals, and the levels will continue to upgrade from bronze, silver-gray, gold to sapphire, which is quite similar to the pvp ladder in many mobile games.

muzi admires high-ranking users, saying, "it's cool that you can learn for so long." she herself also spends a lot of time to clear levels and get high scores to reach a higher level. this reminds her of her feelings when she played "king of glory": the higher the level, the more people admire you, "especially face."

duolingo various levels of medals source: xiaohongshu

there are also rankings for each level, which are inspired by the rankings and leagues in "happy farm 2" and are similar to the pk and ranking competitions in most mobile games.

unlike the friend rankings on wechat reading, duolingo’s rankings were later changed to competition among strangers. jorge, the former product manager of duolingo, believes that this directly exploits the most direct motivation factor of users, who like to compete.

duolingo, which integrates many game elements, is more like a game than a game.

according to jorge, after 2018, duolingo "tried to make itself more fun." in the five years since then, duolingo's daily active users have increased 4.5 times, and the active user retention rate (curr) has increased by 21%.

in the first quarter ending march 31, 2024, duolingo had 31.4 million daily active users and 97.6 million monthly active users.

currently, duolingo has become the most downloaded education app in the world, ranking first among education apps in google play and apple app store.

addicted to self-discipline

many people have more than one educational app installed on their phones. for those who only learn english, there are baidu word, liulishuo, scallop word, etc. but why is it duolingo that makes users addicted and even "trapped"?

muzi once tried to use 100words.com, but forgot to check in several times. after the record was reset to zero, "the enthusiasm for learning was lost." however, duolingo launched a "winning streak freeze" protection mechanism in 2022, which can protect the records of users who are about to lose their winning streak.

duolingo's "duoer" encourages learning. image source: xiaohongshu

"duo'er" and "zhajie" will also persuade students to study in various ways. if the unit study is not completed, "duo'er" will pop up more than a dozen notifications and text messages in a day to bombard the user, and even the desktop components will gradually change from green to red, and the expression will change from naive to angry and anxious, deeply binding the user to the app.

in addition, most learning tasks in apps like 100words.com will gradually accumulate, which means that users need to spend more and more time, "sometimes it takes half an hour or even an hour to complete", which is a burden for su xiaoxiao. in duolingo app, you only need to spend three to five minutes to complete a lesson, and you can keep your winning streak, which is lower and simpler.

the deeper addictive mechanism lies in the fact that duolingo grasps the user's pursuit of self-discipline.

exercise, health preservation, and learning new knowledge are the three iron rules of self-discipline for contemporary young people. muzi told snow leopard finance that it was difficult for her to stick to the same hour of systematic dutch learning through online classes, and she stagnated after two months; she would feel upset and blame herself if she spent the time watching short videos. but if she spent the time watching duolingo, whether it was a few fragmented minutes or an hour, "she would get a sense of accomplishment, which is more comfortable than watching short videos."

for young people trying to take control of their bodies and minds, it never goes wrong to spend time studying.

"duo'er" dressed up as chunli to attend the fashion festival. source: official account

today, characters from duolingo are infiltrating social media, trying to create an image of “i am a self-disciplined person.” duoer has 6.6 million followers on tiktok, more than disney (4.1 million) and apple (2.8 million). he also cosplayed as a character from the original spy kids comic book show and dressed up as chun-li to attend a fashion event.

but all this seems to be just a beautiful illusion.

after more than 500 consecutive days of winning, muzi's dutch is still at an entry-level. he can understand half of daily conversations, but finds it difficult to speak them himself.

after more than 300 consecutive wins, zhong shuyan still had no idea about japanese grammar and sentence structure. she had to memorize the meanings of the words in the game by repeating them over and over again. it was impossible for her to pass the japanese language proficiency test. she couldn't even understand japanese tv dramas.

most users who complain about duolingo's "uselessness" originally wanted to improve their english. their general evaluation is that duolingo is useless as long as you have attended university, and even if you make it to the last class, your english level is only at the level of a junior high school student.

young people who don't like the hardship of studying are "forcing themselves to study" on duolingo. however, it seems that the hardship is of no use.