如何让学习像社交媒体一样令人上瘾 | 路易斯·冯·安（重新发布）

您正在收听的是TED Talks Daily，我们每天为您带来激发好奇心的新观点。我是主持人Elise Hu。我一直在用多邻国学习韩语，可以说有时真的会上瘾。就像我们许多人一样，我不想断掉连续学习的天数。那么，这款应用是如何让语言学习变得有趣的呢？

You're listening to TED Talks Daily where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. I have been using Duolingo to learn Korean, and I definitely could say at times I've been really hooked. Like many of us feel, I don't wanna lose my streaks. So how did the app make language learning fun?

在这段存档的演讲中，教育公平技术专家Luis Van Ahn分享了多邻国开发者如何运用社交媒体和游戏应用中的心理技巧，使这款应用能与令人上瘾的平台竞争。通过这种方式，他们成功将语言教育推广至全球。演讲结束后，请继续收听Luis与TED媒体与内容总监Helen Walters的简短问答环节。

In this archive talk, educational equity technologist, Luis Van Ahn, shares how Duolingo's developers harness the psychological techniques employed in social media and gaming apps to make the app compete with addictive platforms. And in doing so, how they've been able to spread access to language education across the world. Stick around after his talk for a brief q and a between Luis and Ted's head of media and curation, Helen Walters.

我来自危地马拉。危地马拉就在墨西哥下方。对于在场的美国人——请仔细听，因为这大致适用——你们可以把它想象成墨西哥的墨西哥。就像美国不想要墨西哥的非法移民一样，墨西哥也不想要危地马拉的非法移民。这是个更小更穷的国家，嗯，我还能说什么呢？

So I'm from Guatemala. So Guatemala is right below Mexico. And for the Americans in the audience, and let this sink in because it really applies in most ways, 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, it's a poorer country, and, well, what can I tell you?

但这里的墨西哥菜可要好吃得多。危地马拉非常贫穷，很多人认为教育能带来社会阶级的平等。我却一直视其为加剧不平等的工具。因为现实中，富人能购买优质教育从而保持富裕，而穷人仅能勉强读写，永远无法摆脱贫穷——这在贫困国家尤为明显。所幸我虽非出身富贵，却接受了富人式的教育。

It has much better Mexican food. Guatemala is a very poor country, and a lot of people talk about education as something that brings equality to different social classes. I always saw it as the opposite, as something that brings inequality. Because what happens in practice is that people who have a lot of money can buy themselves a really good education, and therefore continue having a lot of money, whereas people who don't have very much money barely learn how to read and write, and therefore never make a lot of money, and this is especially true in poor countries. Now, I was fortunate that I received a rich person's education, even though I didn't grow up rich.

因为我是独子，我的单亲母亲将全部资源投入我的教育。这让我得以赴美读大学，最终获得计算机科学博士学位。正因如此，十年前我决定做些能普及教育机会的事。对了，今天我想谈的正是这个——让所有人平等获得教育。当时我是卡内基梅隆大学的计算机教授，便与博士生Severin共同开展这个项目。

And it's because I'm an only child, and my mother, who was a single mother, spent all of her resources on my education. And this allowed me to come to college to The US and eventually get a PhD in computer science. Now, because of all of this, about ten years ago, I decided I wanted to do something that would give equal access to education to everyone. Oh, by the way, this is what I want to talk to you about today, giving equal access to education to everyone. At the time, I was a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, and I decided to work on this with my PhD student Severin.

以我的思维方式，全面改革教育过于宽泛。于是我决定从单一学科入手。该选哪门学科呢？数学？毕竟我们都热爱数学。

The way my brain works, all of education, is just too general of a problem. So I decided, let's start by teaching one thing. And then I started thinking, okay, well, what should we teach first? Should we teach math? I mean, we both love math.

我和联合创始人都热爱数学，但最终并未选择它。后来考虑计算机科学，但出人意料的是——北美听众可能感到惊讶——我们认定外语教学才是最佳起点。原因如下：

Me and my cofounder, we both love math. And, you know, we we didn't decide to do math. Then we started thinking, well, maybe you should teach computer science. But eventually, and this may be surprising to people in North America, eventually, we decided that the best subject to start with was teaching foreign languages. And let me tell you why.

首先，受众基数庞大。全球约20亿人正在校内外学习外语，其中80%在学英语——因为英语能真正改变命运。在多数国家，掌握英语能显著提升收入潜力，这是选择外语的另一关键原因。其他学科比如数学，单纯掌握并不能直接创收，通常需要进阶学习成为土木工程师等才能变现。但若服务员学会英语，就能转任酒店服务员获得更高收入。因此我们决定从语言教学起步。

There's a number of reasons. One of them is that there's a huge audience for it. There's about 2,000,000,000 people in the world learning a foreign language, both in school and outside of schools. Most of these people, by the way, are learning English. About 80% of them are learning English.

我们还确信，真正触达大众的唯一途径是借助手机（尤其是智能手机）。毕竟在全球兴建学校的成本实在太高了。

And the reason for that is because English can truly transform your life. In most countries in the world, knowledge of English can significantly increase your income potential. So this is another reason why we decided to start with foreign languages, and it's because you can directly make more money if you learn another language, in particular English. And see, this is pretty different than many other subjects. For example, take math.

In the case of math, just knowledge of math does not increase your income potential, because usually you have to learn math to then learn physics, to then become a civil engineer, like, that's how you make more money. Whereas, with languages, if you were a waiter and you learned English, now you can be a waiter at a hotel and make more money. So we decided, well, let's get started by teaching languages. Now, we also convinced ourselves that the only way to really reach a lot of people was by using a mobile phone or a smartphone in particular. See, building schools all over the world is simply too expensive.

In the case of math, just knowledge of math does not increase your income potential, because usually you have to learn math to then learn physics, to then become a civil engineer, like, that's how you make more money. Whereas, with languages, if you were a waiter and you learned English, now you can be a waiter at a hotel and make more money. So we decided, well, let's get started by teaching languages. Now, we also convinced ourselves that the only way to really reach a lot of people was by using a mobile phone or a smartphone in particular. See, building schools all over the world is simply too expensive.

另一方面，全球大多数人已经拥有智能手机，且这一比例只会持续增长。因此，我们当时决定开发一款能让所有人通过手机学习外语的应用，并将其命名为多邻国。为了实现真正的普惠——无论贫富——多邻国采用免费增值模式维持运营。这意味着你可以无限学习而无需付费，但若不付费，课程结束时可能会看到广告。当然，若讨厌广告，也可付费订阅去除广告。

On the other hand, most of the world's population already has access to a smartphone, and the trend is that that fraction is only going to increase. So we decided at the time that we would make a way to learn foreign languages on a mobile phone that was accessible to everyone, and then we called it Duolingo. In order to truly be accessible to everyone, rich and poor, Duolingo uses a freemium model to support itself. What that means is that you can learn as much as you want without ever having to pay, but if you don't pay, you may have to see an ad at the end of a lesson. Now, if you don't like ads, you can also pay to subscribe to turn off the ads.

事实证明，多邻国绝大部分收入来自付费去广告的订阅用户。那么这些付费用户是谁？通常是美国、加拿大等富裕国家的经济宽裕人群。而不付费的用户则多来自巴西、越南、危地马拉等较贫困国家。这种模式的巧妙之处在于它实现了小规模的财富再分配——本质上是由富人为全民教育买单。

And it turns out that the vast majority of the revenue for Duolingo comes from people who pay to subscribe to turn off the ads. Now, who are these people who pay to subscribe to turn off the ads? Well, they're usually people well off people in rich countries like The US and Canada, who are the people who don't pay to subscribe. They usually come from poorer countries like Brazil or Vietnam or Guatemala. So what I like about this model is that it is a small form of wealth redistribution, because we're basically getting the rich people to pay for the education of everyone.

智能手机让我们能触达海量用户，甚至让富人为整体服务买单，这很棒。但用手机推行教育会遇到一个巨大难题：智能手机预装了人类史上最具成瘾性的'毒品'——抖音、Instagram、手机游戏。通过手机推行教育，就像希望人们吃掉西兰花的同时，旁边却摆着史上最美味的甜点。

So with smartphones, we can reach a lot of people, and we can even get the rich people to pay for the whole thing. This is great. However, if you're trying to deliver education with a smartphone, you run into a humongous problem, And it is that smartphones come equipped with some of the most addictive drugs that humanity has ever engineered. TikTok, Instagram, mobile games. See, delivering education over a smartphone is like hoping that people will eat their broccoli, but right next to it, you put the most delicious dessert ever made.

要让教育真正普惠大众，不仅要降低门槛，更要激发学习欲望。多邻国做到了这一点——本质上是将西兰花烹制成甜点的味道。更准确地说，我们运用了Instagram、抖音等App让人沉迷的心理学机制，只是将其用于教育领域。下面举例说明这些技巧。

If if you really want to deliver education to everyone, not only do you have to make it accessible, but also you have to make it so that people want to actually learn. And with Duolingo, we've been able to do this. And at the highest level, the way we've done this is by making the broccoli taste like dessert. I'll say it another way, what we've done is that we've used the same psychological techniques that apps like Instagram, TikTok or mobile games use to keep people engaged, but in this case, we use them to keep people engaged but with education. Let me give you some examples of these techniques.

最有效的技巧之一是'连续学习天数'。这个醒目显示的数字记录用户连续使用产品的天数，其魔力在于：一旦中断，数字就会归零。人们因此每天坚持——没人愿意断签。这套机制确实奏效。

One of the most powerful ones is the notion of a streak. What a streak is, is it's just a counter that measures the number of days that you've used the product consecutively. You just take that number, you put it very prominently in your product, and then people come back every day. And the reason people come back every day is because, well, if they don't come back, that number resets to zero, and people don't want to lose their streak. It works.

虽然连续天数机制曾因导致青少年沉迷Snapchat受诟病，但在教育类App中，它促使人们每日学习。以多邻国为例：我们有超过300万日活用户的连续学习天数超过365天——这意味着他们至少一年未曾间断。关于这个机制还有个趣闻：

Now, on the one side, streaks have been criticized for, for example, getting teens addicted to Snapchat. But in the case of an educational app, streaks get people to come back to study every day. Now to give you an idea of the power of streaks, in the case of Duolingo, we have over 3,000,000 daily active users that have a streak longer than 365. That means they haven't missed a day in the last year or longer. Now, fun fact about streaks.

猜猜哪个国家在教育类App中保持最长的平均连续学习天数？当然是日本。最短的呢？拉丁美洲的朋友们——但我们更会享受生活！

What country do you think has the longest average streaks for an educational app? It's Japan, of course. Shortest average streaks? Latin America, baby. But we're fun.

另一个重要召回机制是通知推送。尽管通知可能被视为垃圾信息，但在教育产品中，用户确实需要学习提醒。多邻国采用精密AI系统，动态优化推送时机和文案以提高召回率。有趣的是，经过复杂运算后，我们发现最佳推送时间算法其实极其简单——

Hey, we're fun. Another important mechanism to get people to come back to your product are notifications. On the one side, notifications can be really spammy and annoying, but in the case of an educational product, people actually want to be reminded to learn. In the case of Duolingo, we have a very sophisticated AI system that basically chooses when to send the notification and also what to say in each notification to maximize the probability that people come back. Now, interestingly, even after all this sophistication, it turns out that the algorithm for choosing what time to send you a notification is pretty simple.

你知道最佳推送时间吗？就是用户上次使用产品的24小时后。道理很简单：如果昨天下午3点有空，今天同一时间大概率也有空。这个价值数百万美元的AI系统最终得出的结论竟如此朴素。

You know what is the best time to send people a notification? I'll tell you. It's twenty four hours after they used the product last. Because and there's an easy explanation. If you were free yesterday at 3PM, you're probably free today at 3PM as well.

需要强调的是，推送不应滥发。多邻国在用户七天不活跃后就会停止发送通知。

So this is what a very sophisticated millions of dollars of AI found. It's funny. Now, with notifications, you shouldn't be spamming. And we're not spamming. With Duolingo, we actually stop sending notifications after seven days of inactivity.

因此，如果你连续七天不使用多邻国，我们将停止向你发送通知。后来我们意识到，既然要停止发送通知，就应该告知用户。于是我们开始推送这样的通知：‘嘿，这些提醒似乎没效果，我们暂时停发。’猜猜用户收到这通知后会怎么做？

So if you don't use Duolingo for seven days, we stop sending you notifications. Now at some point, it occurred to us, if we're stopping to send people notifications, we should let them know. So we started sending this notification to people saying, hey, these reminders don't seem to be working. We'll stop sending them for now. You know what people do when they get this notification?

他们回来了。这种被动攻击策略对我母亲管用，对多邻国也奏效。这种带着怨念的通知特别能促使用户回归，因为他们觉得我们的绿色猫头鹰吉祥物已经放弃他们了——于是他们就回来了。

They come back. Passive aggressive. Works for my mother, works for Duolingo. These passive aggressive notifications are really good at getting people to come back because they feel like our green owl mascot has given up on them. So they come back.

说到我们的绿色猫头鹰——因为所有通知都以它的名义发送，这只既阴阳怪气又穷追不舍的吉祥物，已经成为网络热门 meme 的素材，人们调侃它为让你重回语言学习能有多拼。如今多邻国已成为一种文化现象，数千个恶搞图、周六夜现场的小品都在模仿它。因为我们借鉴了手游和社交媒体的用户粘性策略，成功让人们渴望学习语言。这里有个关键点：我不认为教育类应用能像TikTok、Instagram或手游那样令人上瘾。

And speaking of our green owl mascot, by the way, because all our notifications come from our green owl mascot, and well, he's passive aggressive and also pretty pushy, This has given rise to a lot of memes on the Internet that make fun of just the great lengths that he will go through to get you back to learn a language. Now Duolingo has entered the zeitgeist, and there's there's thousands of memes, there's SNL skits about it, and it's because we've managed to get people to want to learn a language by using the same techniques that mobile games and social media use to get people engaged. And this is a really important point. Let me say this. I don't actually believe that there's a way to make an educational app be as engaging as something like TikTok or Instagram or mobile games.

不过好消息是——我不相信的原因在于教育终归要传授知识，这很难与猫咪视频或明星八卦竞争——但好消息是你本就不需要与之抗衡。关键在于：学习能带来意义感，而刷两小时Instagram后你常会觉得虚度光阴。

But the good news is that and by the way, don't the reason I don't believe that is because ultimately, you have to teach people something, and it's hard to compete with, like, cats and celebrities. But the good news is that I don't think you have to. See, here's the thing. When you're learning something, you get meaning out of it. Whereas, when you're scrolling for two hours on Instagram, a lot of times afterwards, you feel like you just wasted your time.

所以教育产品能达到TikTok 80%-90%的吸引力就足够了，剩余10%-20%由用户的内在动机补足。这是关键洞见：要让人们做有意义的事，完全可以借用社交媒体的运营策略。即便吸引力稍逊，仍能获得数亿用户。

So I think it's actually okay if your educational product is only 80 or 90% as engaging as something like TikTok, because the other 10 or 20% will be provided by people's internal motivation. Though, of course, not much more than that. This is really a key point. If we want to get people to do something meaningful, you can use the same techniques that apps like social media use to get people to do it. And even if you're not as engaging as those apps are, you can still get hundreds of millions of people to use your product.

以多邻国为例，美国通过我们学语言的人数已超过所有高中语言课程学生的总和，全球多数国家皆是如此。我的愿景是：把多邻国在语言领域的成功复制到数学、物理等所有学科，让数千万人用手机学习。期待未来屏幕时间不再是负面词汇，手机能为所有人——无论贫富——提供优质教育。但此刻我最重要的是提醒各位：求求你了，今天记得完成语言课程哦。

In the case of Duolingo, for example, there are more people learning languages on Duolingo in The United States than there are people learning languages across all US high schools combined. And this is true in most countries in the world. My hope is that I know we can do this, but my hope is that as humanity, we can do what Duolingo has done for learning languages, but for all other subjects, where we can get people to learn math with mobile phones, like millions of people to learn math with mobile phones or physics, or whatever. I hope for a future in which screen time is not a bad thing, in which we can deliver high quality education to everyone, rich or poor, using a mobile phone. But the single most important thing that I can end this talk with is a reminder to please, pretty please, I beg you, do your language lessons today.

非常感谢。

Thank you very much.

路易斯，太精彩了。能否再谈谈如何将这种模式扩展到数学等其他学科？具体该怎么做？

Louise, thank you so much. Thank you. I wonder if you can just say a little bit more about that last point, about how do you think that you can apply this type of thinking to other subjects? So you mentioned math, you mentioned things like that. How how do you do that?

我认为尤其适用于需要重复训练的学科——事实上大多数有意义的学习都需要成千上万次重复，比如识字启蒙、基础算术。任何能通过重复掌握的知识，都可以像多邻国这样游戏化，让学习变得高频又有趣。

Yeah. I think in particular subjects that are learned through repetition. And it turns out most things that are kind of really meaningful are learned through, like, thousands and thousands of repetitions. You learn to read through repetition, you learn elementary school math through repetition. Most things that you can learn through repetition, you can actually gamify and turn into something like Duolingo, where people just do it a lot and do it fun.

但解释性内容会更困难，可能需要优质视频辅助——可汗学院做得很好。不过对于需要大量重复训练的领域，我们完全可以沿用相同方法。

It's a little harder for things like explanations. That's probably going to require some really good videos. Sal Khan is doing a really good job with that. But for things that require a lot of repetition, I think we can use the same methods.

太棒了，非常感谢分享这些内容。

Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that.

谢谢。

Thank you.

以上是Luis Von Ahn在2023年TED大会上的演讲。该演讲最初发布于2023年10月。若想了解TED的内容筛选标准，请访问ted.com/curationguidelines。今天的节目就到这里，《TED每日演讲》隶属于TED音频合集栏目。

That was Luis Von Ahn at TED twenty twenty three. This talk was originally posted in October 2023. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at ted.com/curationguidelines. And that's it for today's show. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective.

本期节目由Martha Estevanos、Oliver Friedman、Brian Green、Lucy Little、Alejandra Salazar和Tansika Samarnivon团队制作编辑，Christopher Faizy Bogan负责混音，Emma Taubner和Daniella Balorezo提供额外支持。我是Elise Hu，明天我将带着新鲜观点与您再次相见。

This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estevanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, Alejandra Salazar, and Tansika Samarnivon. It was mixed by Christopher Faizy Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniella Balorezo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed.

感谢收听。

Thanks for listening.

作家Dory Shafreer总是感到压力，要在特定时间表完成重大人生里程碑，比如

Writer Dory Shafreer always felt pressure to hit big life milestones on a particular timeline. Like, write a

出书、结婚、买公寓。就像一张待办清单。但当我30岁时，这些事一件都没完成。

book, maybe get married, buy an apartment. I mean, it was just like this list. And, of course, by the time I turned 30, like, I had done none of these things.

《大器晚成者》——NPR旗下《TED广播时间》下期节目。欢迎订阅或在任意播客平台收听《TED广播时间》。

Late bloomers. That's next time on the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Subscribe or listen to the TED Radio Hour wherever you get your podcasts.