Duolingo reports a 35% increase in Spanish learners following Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show

Bad Bunny’s performance during the Super Bowl LX halftime show has increased interest in Spanish. The language learning app Duolingo, one of the most popular worldwide, recorded a 35% increase in students learning the language compared to last week, just as the Puerto Rican artist walked toward one of the exits of the field of the Levi’s Stadium and sang “Debí tirar más fotos de cuando te tuve.” The platform shared a graph on its X account showing how, at around 17.00 on Sunday, February 8, there was a slight decline in the use of the app and, after 20.00, a significantly high peak. “Is this what a one-night stand feels like?” the message humorously asks, a characteristic feature of its marketing strategy.

Users on X also shared screenshots of the notification they received when Bad Bunny’s performance ended: “Are you having trouble with Spanish? I can help you. Let’s have a lesson now.” Someone sarcastically described it as “diabolical.”

Duolingo’s metrics are more similar to those of an entertainment app than an educational one. As reported by this newspaper in 2024, more than 80 million people log on to learn a language every month, and some 24 million do so every day. Guatemalan Luis Von Ahn, one of the creators, says the “secret” formula is that they use the same techniques as mobile video games and social media. “Each lesson has to last about three minutes, and people have to feel like they did well. We give each person exercises that they have an 80% chance of answering correctly,” he said at the time.

The app offers more than 280 courses in over 40 languages, and although languages are its hallmark, it also offers lessons in mathematics, music, and chess, the latter being the newest addition to its catalog. According to its annual report, Spanish tops the list of courses with the most engaged users, followed by English and Italian. Last year’s 10 most popular languages were English, Spanish, French, Japanese, German, Korean, Italian, Chinese, Portuguese, and Hindi.

In the United States, Hispanics are the largest minority group. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in July 2024, they numbered more than 68 million people. In the last five decades, “the Hispanic population has multiplied sevenfold and its relative weight has quadrupled,” according to the report El español: una lengua viva 2025 (Spanish: A Living Language 2025), which is published annually.

According to information from the Pew Research Center, the Hispanic population is concentrated mainly in southern states such as New Mexico, where 48% of the population speaks Spanish; Tennessee, with 41%; California with 40%; Texas with 39%; Arizona with 31%; and Florida with 27%, the states with the highest percentages. Mississippi is the southern state with the fewest Spanish speakers (4%) in the country.

The main countries of origin for Hispanics in the United States are Mexico (58.3%), Puerto Rico (9%), El Salvador (4%), Cuba (3.9%), and the Dominican Republic (3.7%). However, between 2010 and 2023, “the relative weight of Mexican origin within the Hispanic community has fallen by 6.6 percentage points, while Central American origin has increased by 2.2%, as have South American and Caribbean origins, which have grown by 1.9% and 0.3%, respectively,” it states.

According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2023 alone, the increase in the Hispanic population accounted for almost 71% of the total population growth in the country, and the proportion of Hispanics born in the United States has continued to increase since the beginning of the century.

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