Many of you, especially if you follow me on social media, are aware of my long devotion to Duolingo and its streak. I’ve been using it as a refresher for vocabulary, a guide on how to write certain letters outside of the Latin alphabet, and I’ve also attempted to use it to learn a new language, in this case Norwegian Bokmål. At one point, I was relying on the annoying green bird so much that I even bought a premium for two years, before completely abandoning the platform.

Too cool for school, or whatever the youth is saying today

I like the idea of Duolingo, just as I like the idea of any other free, educational platform that is well-researched and well-supported. I think Spanish was the first language I tried to learn on Duolingo, a good decade ago, when, in addition to tasks, you also had written grammar lessons you could read. It was a promising platform with a quirky mascot, not plagued by too many ads and shrouded in a carefree sentiment of learning the language easily and differently.

I stayed loyal to Duolingo through multiple changes and additions, some for better, some for worse, until I started to notice that, as a complement to a language whose basics I was already familiar with, it functioned great. But as a platform to set you up with a new language, for me, it was failing, and it was failing hard.

My streak on the day when I deleted the Duolingo app from my phone

Initially, I thought that if I put more time into it, it would work out, but in the end, I had to admit my defeat. When I was still toying with the thought of abandoning the platform completely, news came out about Duolingo’s move to replace many of the manual, human content creation with AI.

“One of the best decisions we made recently was replacing a slow, manual content creation process with one powered by AI,” co-founder and CEO Luis von Ahn said in the letter, shared on LinkedIn. “We’d rather move with urgency and take occasional small hits on quality than move slowly and miss the moment.”

Words cannot describe how much I hate every aspect of this, and although I wasn’t quite surprised (we live in the “golden” age of AI, after all), I was disappointed enough to abandon the platform and redirect my focus to other self-learning resources, which, luckily for me, are abundant on the World Wide Web.

I found specialised courses for all the languages I strive to learn, and now focus more on smaller creators as well, both on social media and YouTube. I try to think back when I was initially learning English, what was most helpful to me, and it always comes back to writing on my own and becoming obsessed with film culture. In the end, it also boils down to my time as well, as I prefer to do everything at my own pace, not on the beating drum of an overgrown green monster.

If Duolingo works for you, I applaud you, but I judge you just a smidge as well (I am from Balkan, after all, it’s my cultural heritage). And if you found other platforms that align more with the sentiments I expressed here, please let me know which ones you are using and how they are working out for you.

Until next week,

With my last brain cell,

xoxo Mina