In a rare feat of decisive action, I uninstalled Duolingo from my phone this week. Bringing my 903 day ‘streak’ to an abrupt and underwhelming end. For two and half years I’ve been doing daily lessons – mostly Spanish but recently chess.
I like Duolingo and its cute little green owl. It’s a fun way of learning a new skill and I was proud that for the last 700 days I haven’t had to use a single ‘streak freeze’ (i.e I haven’t missed a single day). Christmas day, or when I’ve been ill, or on holiday, or camping somewhere with barely any phone reception, I’ve done Duolingo. Every. Single. Day.
But recently I’ve become acutely aware that I was doing the ‘lessons’ just for the purpose of keeping my streak going, and because it’s a welcome distraction for my brain that needs very little encouragement when it comes to procrastinating. The truth is that I don’t find it hard to remember to do Duolingo every day. That’s not a testament to my commitment to self-improvement or building atomic habits. I think I find it easy in the way that an alcoholic would find it easy to think about having a drink every single day. Like many apps it is designed to be addictive, and it does a great job.
These apps are created and constantly iterated by the smartest people and algorithms in the world. They’re stacked up on one side of your phone screen and you’re alone on the other. As a tech company, I think Duolingo is fairly benevolent compared to the likes of the Meta and X, or gambling and payday lending platforms that try to reel you in.
Of course they’re all laser focused on extracting the maximum engagement from the rest of us. And Duolingo does a great job at ‘gamifying’ its platform so it can snag as much of your attention as possible.
If you don’t pay for the product, you are the product
I never paid for the premium version or clicked on an ad, so I cost them money – I don’t think they’ll be sad to see me go. But it’s called “‘paying’ attention” for a reason, and it’s clear that there was a cost at my end. Let’s be generous and say I only did five minutes a day for those 903 days – that’s 4,515 minutes (or 75 hours). Fair to say that if I’d gone to a Spanish language camp or chess school for two full weeks I would be a lot better at both, because you’re not learning much in five minutes a day, you’re just distracting yourself.
Like everyone else, I spend too much time on my phone. It sets a bad example for my kids and it’s so instinctive to unlock it that I’m barely aware that I’m doing it. It’s a Pavlovian reaction to the countless moments of micro boredom. And for me especially it’s a way of procrastinating from doing or thinking about something that I’d rather avoid in the short run.
I read something the other day that basically said ‘the thoughts you distract yourself from at 2pm are the ones that keep you awake at 2am’. Me and my insomnia can really testify to the painful truth in that. Duolingo and the other apps on my phone are integral parts of the billion dollar distraction-industrial complex!
Sorry little owl, but I’m going cold turkey.
Charities in the attention economy.
As charity communicators we’re players in the attention game. We’ve actually got something worthwhile to say and we want people to listen. But that invariably means we are bedfellows of the big tech companies and social networks who know that outrage and conflict get much more traction than ‘awareness raising’ and compassion.
Getting people’s attention feels harder than ever. There’s more things competing for it but it’s increasingly funnelled into a small number of siloes that monopolise it for their own nefarious purposes.
What can charities learn from Duolingo and Instagram?
That’s the kind of question asked in Linkedin posts and conference sessions these days.
Gamification? Micro-content? Manipulating people’s emotions? Take your message to where your audience is? I’m not sure any of this is the answer. Attention isn’t and shouldn’t be a commodity for us like it is for them. They can maximise and monetise it, but for us it’s a means to an end, not the end itself. Our goal has to be change, action, giving a shit, showing up and making the world a bit better. Maybe we shouldn’t sweat too much about being better at playing the wrong game.
This isn’t the internet we wanted. Maybe it’s the internet we deserve right now, and I worry that AI is only going to make it a worse place to be. But I’m optimistic that in the long run we can take it back from the tech billionaires and make it the more diverse, tolerant place it could be. It won’t happen anytime soon though, so for the time being we’ve just got to hang in there and look out for each other. If you’ve got kids too then I feel for you because they’re the biggest victims of this dystopian social experiment.
Think about that at 2pm when you can do something about it, like deleting an app, or else you’ll be fretting over it at 2am.
