[midtake]

I hate this take. Duolingo users understand fully, once they clear their language's Section 3 or higher, that they have a long road ahead.

The point of Duolingo is to be a hook into language learning, not a complete replacement. It should be coupled with Pimsleur and other traditional study methods if one is truly serious about learning a language.

Would you rather have teens shitposting on TikTok or learning Duolingo? Posts like yours are doomer cringe.

[Uehreka]

This is an app that constantly nags you to use it, to the point that its mascot is so widely known as annoying that they play it for laughs in their ads.

All that to say: you and Duolingo’s owners may disagree about what “the point of Duolingo is”. I don’t think they care if users are achieving fluency, they want users to keep coming back to the app so they can be served ads.

And yeah, that doesn’t mean users can’t take initiative and build a better habit-based approach that incorporates Duolingo, but that’s not what the app is pushing you to do.

[midtake]

Most apps are nagware, that is not a Duolingo issue.

The ads are for converting users to paid subscribers, not just "ads."

I don't see your point at all.

[dotancohen]

I'll vouch for the nagware. When I was studying with duolingo, it was the nag features that got me to practice every day.

[ileonichwiesz]

A lot of apps are nagware, but I’ve never seen any as blatant and forceful as Duolingo.

They diligently A/B test their notifications, constantly looking for the variations that’ll show a higher click rate. They’ll hit you with “[Your friend’s name] will hate you forever if you don’t do Duolingo right now!” if you start slipping.

I’ve dropped it after a year or so when I realized that I wasn’t really learning any Turkish, but I was caught in some sort of corporate-designed psychological trap.

[lm28469]

When I see my friend getting their smartphones out at 23:58 to complete a lesson and not lose their streak because they paid for the app I can confidently say that the point of duolingo is to make money by appealing to your monkey brain through gamification

[mtalantikite]

I agree with you, it could have a place in a toolkit of things to acquire a language with. But I don't think that's what they're marketing themselves as. Their tag line is "The world's best way to learn a language", which, personally, I wouldn't blame a person for reading and thinking "cool, I guess I'll just do this and finally learn a second language!". They didn't say "build your foundation in a foreign language" or "first steps in your language learning journey". They said "best way to learn a language", which, I'd say, is false and misleading.

I've never used TikTok, but I actually wonder if this hypothetical teenager would learn more following a ton of users in their target language or playing games on Duolingo. I'd be interested in that study.

[MountDoom]

You're instinctively ranking TikTok as worse, but I think that parent is trying to say that Duolingo is effectively a waste of time. If you have two ways to waste your time on a phone, what makes one of them worse?

If the difference is that TikTok is a thing that "the youth" does and that we don't understand, then I guess some introspection is warranted on your closing ad hominem...