“How do you say ‘quitter’ in Japanese?”
“But then he kept learning French without you.”
“Looks like you forgot your Spanish lessons again. You know what happens now!”
With the creation of a tiny green owl with an extremely passive-aggressive, sometimes threatening, and overall blunt personality, the unforgettable app for language learning took off, aptly named Duolingo.
Some might call it a genius marketing strategy — utterly addictive. Others, however, find anxiety in its relentless notifications, timers, and infamous widgets, where the bird has been seen burning a house — or the world — down, bawling, excessively aging, dying — or dead — and worse. No longer a fun game or language journey, the need to “extend your streak” is insatiable.
Nevertheless, Duolingo isn’t the only company taking a nontraditionalist approach to audience retention. Spotify’s “Wrapped” — or roasts on listeners — is yet another example of corporations crossing lines in their unprofessional interactions with users, often masking poor product quality and user effectiveness.
Still, these methods do work, as the language learning app has seen much success and interest, increasing by 127.61% since just last year for a current net worth of $18.43 billion, as of Feb. 13, with 37.2 million daily active users. Spotify, meanwhile, boasts 675 million monthly active users.
But success shouldn’t come at the expense of user well-being.
Duolingo’s neverending notifications create a compulsive need to use the app, adding not only to users’ to-do lists but also their stress-filled loads.
Similarly, Spotify Wrapped, while humorous at first, can lead to feelings of self-consciousness when users post their most played tracks on social media.
Addiction and comparison are common reactions among teens toward social media and games, developing a daily obsession to log on, check in, or maintain a streak. However, the more time spent on these platforms, the stronger the overattachment becomes.
Many teens soon find themselves comparing their every action, preference, or achievement to the curated posts and images others share or setting a reminder every night to do a lesson, turning what should be fun or even educational experiences into another daily stressor.
According to the Teen National Health Interview Survey (NHIS-Teen), 21% of adolescents report experiencing anxiety symptoms, with 34% attributing them to bullying. While it might not always be obvious, this bullying can manifest as something as subtle as peer pressure or teasing, like when someone’s shared music taste differs from the norm. What starts as an app’s harmless year-end joke can quickly become a source of deep self-consciousness for some.
In the rush to keep audiences hooked, many of these companies have lost sight of their original purposes. Take Duolingo, for instance. While some might argue that its constant notifications are part of a larger effort to spread languages, the platform has seen limited success on this front.
In an African Educational Research Journal case study, a “gifted student” was interviewed and tested on how well they could learn French from Duolingo over a few months. The results would be shocking for the app.
Despite the participants noting the experience as “enjoyable and competitive,” they still found a standard classroom setting more appealing. Furthermore, comprehension exams yielded barely passing reading and writing and completely failing to listen and to speak, key skills needed to hold even a simple “How was your day?” conversation.
Rather than helping users learn, Duolingo offers crutches, like word translations, and over-rewards standard classwork, becoming a time-waster — a truth hidden in their gamification and nonstop alerts.
Beyond lacking product effectiveness, risky marketing strategies can also lead to slip-ups that break important boundaries, including those relating to one’s race, immigration status, and even suggestive language.
In 2018, Duolingo was forced to take down sentences due to concerns about their implications in a French lesson. These included “She raises her shirt” and “I am on my knees.” The issue was not fixed by 2021 when a user was given, “Are they legal?” and “He has to be detained right now” to translate into Spanish.
Though these sentences might not have usually generated this sort of unrest, users misinterpreted many of the phrases due to acclimation to the app’s often surprising and jokingly dark notifications.
This is not to say that all companies adopting unconventional methods to connect with users are inherently bad or ill-intended. However, it’s crucial for users to be aware of potential risks — from poor health outcomes and ineffective learning to exposure to harmful content — so they can better navigate these platforms and draw personal boundaries.
