Luis von Ahn How to make learning as addictive as social media TED Talk

So, I'm from Guatemala. That is where Guatemala is. Also, that is not where they keep the prisoners. That is called Guantanamo. Not the same place. So, Guatemala is right below Mexico. For the Americans in the audience, you can think of it as Mexico's Mexico. Just like the US doesn't want illegal immigration from Mexico, Mexico doesn't want illegal immigration from Guatemala. It's a smaller country, poorer, and has much better Mexican food. Guatemala is a very poor country. A lot of people talk about education as something that brings equality, but I always saw it as the opposite, as something that brings inequality. People who have money can buy good education and continue having money, while poor people barely learn to read and write. I was fortunate that I received a rich person's education even though I didn't grow up rich, because my mother spent all her resources on my education. This allowed me to come to the US and get a PhD in computer science. About 10 years ago, I decided I wanted to do something that would give equal access to education to everyone. I was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and worked on this with my PhD student, Severin. We decided to start with teaching foreign languages. There are about two billion people learning a foreign language, 80% learning English, because English can transform your life and increase income. Unlike math, where you need to learn physics to become an engineer, with languages, a waiter who learns English can become a waiter at a hotel and make more money. We decided the only way to reach many people was via smartphone. Building schools is too expensive, but most people have smartphones. We made Duolingo, accessible to everyone. Duolingo uses a freemium model: you can learn for free with ads, or subscribe to remove ads. Most revenue comes from subscribers, usually well-off people in rich countries, while people in poorer countries use the free version. It's a small form of wealth redistribution. However, smartphones come with addictive apps like TikTok and Instagram. Delivering education on a smartphone is like hoping people eat broccoli next to delicious dessert. We have to make the broccoli taste like dessert. We use the same psychological techniques as social media and games to keep people engaged with education. For example, streaks: a counter of consecutive days. Over 3 million daily active users have a streak longer than 365 days. Japan has the longest streaks, Latin America the shortest. Notifications: we have an AI system that chooses when to send notifications. The best time is 24 hours after last use. We stop sending after 7 days of inactivity, and we send a passive aggressive notification saying we'll stop. That makes people come back. Our green owl mascot is passive aggressive and pushy, leading to many memes. I don't think an educational app can be as engaging as TikTok, but it doesn't have to be. Learning gives meaning, while scrolling often feels like wasted time. If your product is 80-90% as engaging, the rest comes from internal motivation. More people learn languages on Duolingo in the US than in all US high schools combined. My hope is that we can do for other subjects what Duolingo has done for languages. I hope for a future where screen time is not bad, and we can deliver high-quality education to everyone via mobile phone. Please do your language lessons today. Thank you.