The 'biggest winner' of a potential TikTok ban? Duolingo. Here’s why.
Language learning app Duolingo has seen an over 200% spike in U.S. users learning Mandarin "out of spite" as many flee to Chinese app RedNote amid the uncertainty surrounding TikTok's future.
On Friday, the Supreme Court upheld the decision to ban TikTok in the U.S. On Thursday, TikTok had indicated it was preparing to shut the app down come Sunday if the court ruled against them. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden has said he wouldn't enforce the ban, leaving a decision to President-elect Donald Trump. So while it's still unclear what could happen to TikTok this weekend, social media users are already finding their way to other apps, like RedNote.
Among all free iPhone apps, RedNote, known as Xiaohongshu in Chinese, is currently the top social networking app on the Apple App Store. Many TikTok fans angry about the potential ban took to the platform while searching for alternatives, reveling in the irony of flooding a Chinese-language, Chinese-based app with American users (and data) in response to the U.S. government's concerns about U.S. data filtering through TikTok to Chinese parent company ByteDance.
It has become something of a meme to hop onto RedNote, with many joking they are looking for a "new Chinese spy" or saying "We'll make SURE they have our data now."
Similarweb, a digital market intelligence company, reported Thursday that RedNote has 3.4 million daily active users on iOS and Android in the U.S., an increase from 654.2K users within 24 hours. Overall, the app has seen a 133.8% week-over-week increase since gaining traction at the beginning of January.
The second layer of irony is that the majority of the app and its posts are in, well, Chinese Mandarin. Instead of letting that hinder their trolling of the U.S. government, however, American users have simply taken to learning key phrases in Mandarin instead.
And, according to Duolingo, a lot of these users seem to be taking learning it pretty seriously.
Duolingo reports 216% growth in new Mandarin learners
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, made Tuesday, Duolingo joked, "oh so NOW you’re learning mandarin" to an audience of 15 million viewers, receiving nearly 190k likes for their efforts.
In another post the next day, Duolingo said, "Learning Mandarin out of spite? You're not alone. We’ve seen a ~216% growth in new Chinese (Mandarin) learners in the U.S. compared to this time last year."
According to a press statement Duolingo sent to Paste BN, this increase is not only a huge year-over-year uptick for Mandarin itself but also represents a "much bigger increase than other languages." For example, said Duolingo, Spanish, one of its most popular languages to learn in the U.S., grew only 40% over the same time period.
How did a large influx of these U.S. users decide to log on to Duolingo for the first time? TikTok, of course. According to a "how did you hear about us" survey conducted by the company, the spike in Mandarin learners has corresponded with a spike in people selecting "TikTok" for their answer.
The majority of these are under the age of 30, according to the company's data, and 43% said they wanted to learn to connect with people, a substantial increase from the baseline of around 25%.
"Spite has found its most articulate expression yet," said one commenter under Duolingo's Wednesday post. "Turns out you guys are the biggest winner," joked another.
What is Chinese Mandarin?
Mandarin is the most widely spoken dialect of Chinese and is the official language of Mainland China. While all Mandarin is Chinese, not all Chinese is Mandarin, as the umbrella term "Chinese" can refer to one of the roughly 129 other dialects spoken by other ethnic groups in China, such as Cantonese.
Because of its widespread use, however, Mandarin is often colloquially referred to as "Chinese" interchangeably.
Americans show off their new Mandarin skills
Some users have taken to other platforms to show off their new skills, like one video posted to TikTok with over 5 million views in which user @amphetamineanne says joyfully "Watch this" before saying in Mandarin: "What the (expletive) was the U.S. government thinking?"
Users @krisdewdew posted a clip with more than 4 million views in which they shared some new key phrases they had learned, including, "Hello. This is my cat" and "I'm learning Mandarin" along with the caption "Me after literally 2 hours on RedNote."
In another clip with over a million views posted by @orionsisters, two American sisters have a simple conversation in Mandarin, joking in their caption, "Us practicing our Chinese so we can move to China and keep TikTok."
Again, multiple comments beneath the posts joked about the pure "pettiness" of Americans suddenly learning the language to hit back at the U.S. government's TikTok ban, saying "It’s crazy how motivational spite is" and "Revenge is the best motivation."