TikTok U.S. users have been learning Chinese on Duolingo in increasing numbers amid their adoption of a Chinese social app called RedNote ahead of the TikTok ban. The U.S. law, scheduled to go into effect on January 19, unless halted by the Supreme Court, will see TikTok removed from U.S. app stores and will stop the app from functioning on users’ devices unless they install a VPN client.
Instead of trying to work around the ban, however, over 700 million TikTok users have shifted over to the social video platform RedNote (aka Xiaohongshu), prompting a surprising cultural exchange between the two countries’ citizens — not to mention quite a few requests for American users to help with Chinese users’ English homework.
Though some TikTok refugees have since struggled with technical problems when signing up for RedNote, and others immediately got booted for community violations, the intent of the move from one Chinese-owned app to another is meant to send a strong signal to the U.S. government and would-be TikTok competitors like Meta that there’s demand for the type of social networking experiences that China creates and U.S. companies have only managed to imitate.
The move is also serving as something of a pulse check as to whether or not U.S. users are worried about Chinese companies collecting their personal data for nefarious use — one of the key factors that led to TikTok’s ban in the first place. (As it turns out, many are not, as this migration shows.)
However, because Shanghai-based Xiaohongshu/RedNote is designed for a Chinese audience, the app’s default language is Mandarin Chinese. That prompted an increase in U.S. users of the Duolingo language-learning app to take a crash course in Mandarin.
According to Duolingo, the app has seen roughly 216% growth in new Mandarin learning in the U.S. compared to this time last year, with a sharp spike in mid-January as RedNote’s adoption took off. In addition, the company reports that in its “How did you hear about us” survey that new users are prompted to answer, it’s seeing a corresponding spike in people selecting “TikTok” as their response.
“Oh so NOW you’re learning mandarin,” the company joked in an X post on Tuesday. It also posted a video to TikTok promoting the use of its app for learning the Chinese language. The short video showed the company’s green owl mascot at the airport heading to China overlaid by text that said “me because I’d rather move to China & learn Mandarin on Duolingo.” The video currently has north of half a million likes. Another more recent video focused on teaching Mandarin phrases for “TikTok refugees” has over 620,000 likes.
According to data from app intelligence provider Appfigures, consumer demand for Duolingo’s language learning courses has also affected the app’s install base.
The firm reports Duolingo’s app saw a 36% increase in U.S. downloads across the App Store and Google Play combined as of January 3 — an early sign that users may have tried out different Chinese social apps before the surge to join RedNote hit later in the month.
A week ago, Duolingo was ranked in the 40s for Top Apps (minus games) and Top Overall (including games). As of right now, it’s No. 22 in Top Overall and No. 20 in Top Apps.
