As I write this, my Duolingo streak has reached 566 days. My daily habit of using the app actually began almost two years ago, and my streak has continued to climb thanks to the app’s routine forgiveness of its users’ lapses. In that time, my French has improved: I’ve learned new vocabulary and refined my intuition for when to use the subjunctive.
Even so, it has not always been clear to me why I’ve kept the streak alive. Accessible and inexpensive language-learning content can be hard to find, which can partially explain Duolingo’s draw. At the same time, it’s only one modality among many, and it doesn’t include long-form writing exercises or spoken conversation practice, which are my biggest weak spots. Even worse, I’ve noticed that I gravitate towards Duolingo over more challenging options, like speaking with a conversation partner or reading in French.
Other users have had similar experiences. A Reddit search for “Duolingo burnout” returns pages of users fed up with the app, feeling little motivation to continue learning. Many of these users start their posts with discussions of the lengths to which they’ve gone to maintain their streaks, implying that their original goals have taken a backseat.
Gamification is a powerful tool. It transforms tasks that might otherwise seem mundane or pointless into strategic objectives. It motivates users to return to a service again and again. As a result, an increasing number of companies have implemented streaks and other games into their products. But gamification has a dark side, too. It saps the intrinsic enjoyment of the underlying activity, turning it into something done mainly for the sake of a reward in the form of accumulating points or extending a streak. When that happens, it’s only a matter of time before users grow tired. Adding to a streak can feel powerful, but it’s ultimately empty when you lose interest in the activity itself.
In order to reap the benefits of gamification, it must be used judiciously. When done wrong, gamification can turn a chore that’s already meaningless into one that feels existentially depressing. Users question why they use a product even as they are unable to stop themselves from coming back to it. When done right, the element of play can bring out a user’s intrinsic motivation and remind them of their joy. By designing gamified experiences with sensitivity and moderation, companies can inspire action without triggering obligation.
Streak effects
Streaks make our goals feel more tangible and easier to control. It’s hard to quantify how much my French improves from a single conversation session; even if I have lengthy discussions most days, a couple of mistakes can make me feel like I’ve made no progress at all. But, thanks to Duolingo, I know for a fact that I’ve practiced for at least 566 days in the last two years, a number which reliably rises every time I use the app. The power of streaks is undeniable, but they may be less effective at helping us achieve our goals than we’d like to believe. According to a study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, streaks can be such an effective tool that users often view extending their streak as more important than engaging in the underlying activity.1
Yet, on its own, the streak isn’t always motivational. I regularly play games on the New York Times website and Chess.com. I log into LinkedIn—which offers streaks for playing its minigames—out of professional necessity. Yet I have rarely felt any desire to extend the streaks these websites display. Breaking streaks can even have a demotivating effect. The same study found that users who break their streaks are more likely to stop using the platform entirely. My (much) younger self found this to be the case when the end of streaks I had maintained on Snapchat fueled my permanent desertion of the platform. These departures can be attenuated by giving users the option to pick back up where they left off at a cost. However, the JCR study found that users are less motivated to keep their streaks when they know they can repair them.
Corporate games
For companies that incorporate streaks into their products, the appeal is twofold. First, streaks bring an element of fun. Using the product becomes, in part, a game in which the consumer attempts to maximize the length of their streak. We know from both empirical studies and marketing industry wisdom that gamification can greatly enhance customer satisfaction and retention.2 As a result, we’ve seen companies from Starbucks to Alibaba introduce elements of play to activities that would otherwise be mundane. Alibaba offers rewards for browsing the platform, which can be used as money during certain promotions, while Starbucks assigns users challenges and opportunities to win coupons through its app.
The second factor, however, can undermine the fun: quantification. A study by Jordan Etkin of Duke Business School found that people are more likely to engage in behaviors they keep track of than those they don’t.3 Activity monitors like the Apple Watch, for instance, are effective in promoting exercise. They can also enhance users' feelings of agency, giving them the chance to proactively monitor their own progress and adjust their habits accordingly.
And yet, according to Etkin, quantification can drain the enjoyment out of activities we’re already motivated to do. If I do a Duolingo lesson in order to extend my streak, it stands to reason that I don’t do it solely for the fun of learning a new language.
The problem here is intrinsic motivation. Streaks, rewards, and other attempts at gamification attempt to extend the consumer’s desire to use a product past the point when they’d otherwise stop. As a result, the activity in question starts to feel like work: something done in exchange for compensation. When we stop doing an activity because of its inherent enjoyment, we make excuses to do other things instead.
On top of that, we've reached a point where streaks have crept into so many different products that they don’t feel particularly meaningful. An excessive number of gamified experiences makes it hard to care about any individual streak. If everything in your digital life has a counter, a goal, and a notification reminding you of your progress, then none of them feel special. The streak becomes just another obligation among dozens.
This might be why Duolingo uses negative messaging to maintain engagement. When users stop logging in, the platform sends push notifications and emails with messages like, "You made Duo sad,” complete with an image of the owl mascot’s disappointed expression. It's an attempt to weaponize guilt when the streak itself no longer compels. Duolingo has engagement maximization down to a science, but it’s clear that when users are encouraged to maintain their streak above all, the priority of creating valuable resources that they will naturally return to is secondary.
Conscious Fun
Companies that want to reap the rewards of gamifying their products should do so with intention. The goal should not simply be to contort your user interface into the form that most resembles a video game. Instead, look to claim a top slot in your customers’ hierarchy of priorities. To that end, tie gamified challenges to customers’ preexisting goals. Duolingo, for all its faults, has millions of users who maintain steadily growing streaks because studying a language every day is itself a worthwhile pursuit. Chess.com streaks, on the other hand, are harder to get excited about if you see chess as an occasional fun distraction, and not a skill to which you want to dedicate daily practice.
Where this is unrealistic, look to enhance the feeling of reward for “winning” at your product’s game. Adding real rewards, such as coupons or free access to a product, can help to offset the fatiguing effects of streak creep. Starbucks does this effectively by offering free drinks after a certain number of purchases, tying the gamified element to something customers can actually benefit from.
My Duolingo streak has become something I maintain largely out of habit—a number I check the way one checks the weather. It persists not because Duolingo has made language learning irresistible, but because breaking it feels like losing something I've already invested in. This is the paradox of streak creep: the more companies gamify their products to keep customers engaged, the more our engagement becomes hollow. We optimize for the metric rather than the goal it was meant to represent—in this case, a genuine curiosity for learning another language.
The solution isn't to abandon gamification entirely. Play and progress tracking can genuinely enhance our lives when they align with what we actually care about, making our daily activities feel even more rewarding. But companies must recognize that there's a cost to extracting motivation artificially. Every notification, every streak counter, every guilt-tripping mascot represents a choice: to trust that users will return because they value the product, or to manufacture reasons for them to stay. The former requires restraint. It requires believing that a product can be good enough to speak for itself. In an industry increasingly crowded with competing streaks and notifications, that kind of confidence is what it takes to level up your game.
