I was scrolling Twitter today when I came across a surprising revelation from Duolingo, the language-learning app known for its persistent notifications that guilt-trip you into studying. The app is reporting a 216% spike in the number of US users learning Mandarin compared to this time last year — a surge of interest that one can’t help but notice coincides not only with rising political tensions but also renewed chatter around a potential ban on TikTok.
I suppose some of those users may simply want to brush up on their Mandarin to, say, impress their Chinese business colleagues on Zoom calls. Maybe they’ve got an itch to read Confucian philosophy in its original form. Given the timing, however, you can’t help but wonder: Does what’s going on with TikTok, the wildly popular app owned by Chinese company ByteDance, have something to do with this? Are these budding linguists thinking they’ll be able to communicate with TikTok’s engineers to try and keep the For You page alive?
In all seriousness, TikTok “refugees” in recent days have started flocking to the Chinese social media app known in English as RedNote, with so many of them downloading it that it became the most downloaded free app in Apple’s App Store. One way or another, the looming threat of a TikTok ban (which looks set to go into effect this Sunday) means that Gen Z users will be looking to get their fix of lip-syncs and dance videos somewhere else.
Duolingo, for its part, joked in a separate tweet earlier this week: “oh so NOW you’re learning mandarin”. The app certainly hasn’t revealed the motivations behind the spike — who knows, maybe it’s something as simple as disgruntled TikTok users wanting to learn how to curse the ban in perfect Mandarin. Whatever the reason, though, I hope those new language students are ready for what the app is going to throw at them. Duolingo’s owl mascot is a stern taskmaster, constantly hounding you to study and study some more (if you know, you know).
