I'm definitely struggling with the thought of letting go of daily involvement of sites like Khanacademy, Duolingo, FreeCodeCamp, and TypingClub because of the fear of losing "internet points".
For Khanacademy and FreeCodeCamp, they have a grid with colored squares like GitHub to display how often a user goes on the site, so skipping a few days doesn't seem like a big deal to me. But for something like Duolingo, it only keeps up with a daily streak count which makes it REALLY intimidating to skip 1 day. When I came home from my job on a Friday I was so exhausted I stayed off the computer for the rest of the day, completely forgetting about my daily streak on Duolingo. I was mortified the next day when I realized I completely forgot to log in the day before.
Writing this out, it all seems a bit ridiculous, doesn't it? I'm on these sites to learn new subjects or a new language. No one is going to care how many days in a row I studied x or y.
It's a problem that gamification has become this successful. I wonder what the psychology of it is, does it actually feed on the same neurons involved in addiction?
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I'm definitely struggling with the thought of letting go of daily involvement of sites like Khanacademy, Duolingo, FreeCodeCamp, and TypingClub because of the fear of losing "internet points".
For Khanacademy and FreeCodeCamp, they have a grid with colored squares like GitHub to display how often a user goes on the site, so skipping a few days doesn't seem like a big deal to me. But for something like Duolingo, it only keeps up with a daily streak count which makes it REALLY intimidating to skip 1 day. When I came home from my job on a Friday I was so exhausted I stayed off the computer for the rest of the day, completely forgetting about my daily streak on Duolingo. I was mortified the next day when I realized I completely forgot to log in the day before.
Writing this out, it all seems a bit ridiculous, doesn't it? I'm on these sites to learn new subjects or a new language. No one is going to care how many days in a row I studied x or y.
It's a problem that gamification has become this successful. I wonder what the psychology of it is, does it actually feed on the same neurons involved in addiction?