As TikTok prepares for a likely ban in the US, Duolingo has seen a spike in users learning Chinese. Coincidence?

Duolingo has recently experienced a dramatic increase in new users signing up for its Mandarin courses. Over the past year, the app has seen a 216% rise in US learners of Mandarin Chinese, with a sharp spike this January according to the language-learning platform. This sudden surge reflects a growing trend, or mass exodus, in the social media landscape.

TikTok, owned by Chinese parent company ByteDance, is just days away from a probable ban in the US, which means its users have been flocking to alternative platforms. One platform in particular – another Chinese one – has gained the attention of around 700,000 US TikTok users. Xiaohongshu, known internationally as Rednote, has become a popular choice for “TikTok refugees”, but its default language has caused a ripple effect.

The default language on Rednote is Mandarin, which has led to a large portion of US TikTok users taking to Duolingo to learn the language. This shift from one Chinese-owned platform to another suggests that US social media users are not concerned about the collection of their data. The US Government has cited security concerns over privacy and data access by the Chinese Government as the motivation for a TikTok ban.

Data from app intelligence platform Appfigures reports that Duolingo experienced a 36% increase in downloads via the App Store and Google Play as of January 3rd. Could this be a sign that TikTok users were trying out other Chinese social media platforms before settling on Rednote?

The adoption of Rednote by US TikTok users is an interesting one. Although a nation-wide ban on ByteDance’s platform sounds final, there are potential workarounds that users can try. When TikTok was banned in India in 2020, many users employed the help of VPNs to access the app. There are also already-popular English-speaking alternatives like YouTube Shorts and Instagram that TikTok users could turn to. So why another Chinese social media platform instead?

Rednote isn’t exactly a clone of TikTok. In fact, it’s widely considered as China’s equivalent to Instagram, while resembling Pinterest and focusing largely on shopping. The platform launched in 2013 and has over 300 million active monthly users, being predominantly popular with young women. One idea from Saleem Ablahash, a professor of advertising and public relations at Michigan State University, is that this is an example of “media substitution hypothesis”, where people fill a vacuum created by one media platform with another. He suggests that since TikTok is accommodating to users who prefer passivity, users may seek a platform that similarly allows them to lurk as onlookers. Rednote offers a similar experience. “Mix the social with satisfying the need to shop—to buy cheap clothes or exercise equipment—that is the full package, in terms of user experience,” Alhabash says.

To get the updates around the TikTok US ban, plus more social media news and more, check out the RouteNote blog.