There’s a smug good-citizen buzz in using a purportedly educational app. Not that all that usage is strictly functional, though.

Unsurprisingly, slightly more than half (53%) of Duolingo-ers use it to learn English. Duolingo offers more than 60 courses in 19 languages in total. Also, the fact I use the app in the first place isn’t that unusual: it has around 150m users overall, including 25m monthly actives. (I got that idea from a fellow addict, as improving my mediocre-to-intermediate French is my number one language goal.)Īside from the outlandishly long daily streak, I’m representative of the typical user in terms of daily time spent in the app: according to Duolingo’s own internal stats, 10 minute sessions are absolutely average.

All three translate into French rather than English, so the biggest gain in theory is there. I complete two units in total, the bare minimum necessary to maintain the streak, in one of three languages: Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, all of which I feel like a rank beginner in. Most of a day! Is it even time well spent? I guess ‘yes’ was my subconscious answer, because I went all the way to 132 days before breaking the streak… But, over 100 days, that equals almost 17 hours. I spend around 10 minutes a day on Duolingo and I’m not convinced it’s worth it.Īnd the fact these doubts only started occurring to me after I completed a 100 day streak on this maddeningly well-designed and moreish app is… annoying.Īdmittedly, 10 minutes a day isn’t a massive time commitment.

Duolingo evil