HelloTalk is destroying my motivation to learn Japanese.

I’m sure I must be the first person making a post like this, but please bear with me I’ll explain everything in a bit.

I (24 M) had been depressed for about the first half of 2022 due to relationship problems. I went through sooo many negative feelings. When everything was over, I managed to get some mental rest, and then all of sudden anime came magically into my life. At first I didn’t really take it seriously but to cut a long story short, not only did it get me out of my depression but it also gave me unbelievable motivation to get on with my life. Needless to say, my urge to learn Japanese was unmistakable. I got Duolingo, Genki, Kanji Study, Anki and I went at it with everything I had. My only reason for learning Japanese was pure motivation and I even had a solid goal of passing JLPT N4 in December 2023. I enjoyed every single minute of studying Japanese, and now I’m almost N5 level after studying for only 4 months.

Until I got started on that HelloTalk app… Disclaimer, this is not to say HelloTalk is not a good app. It is one of the best apps for language exchange and I myself used it 3 years ago for my French (though I was already almost proficient in the language) and it helped me get a lot better. However, I think that in my particular case it has been counter productive with Japanese to say the least. Here’s why.

For starters, not even having 100% completed N5 myself, I think it’s fair to say that I rushed wayyy too much to get myself out there to chat with native people. I should have waited until I got a better grasp of vocabulary and especially grammar. It is thanks to Google translate that I manage to get by with most of my conversations in Japanese (by filtering stuff of course). But that’s not even the problem.

The problem part is that by talking with Japanese people I want so bad to be there and live it up in Japan. And I know that I can’t go to Japan to meet them anytime soon, not even as a tourist. And even though I knew that right from the start and it didn’t stop me from learning Japanese, interacting with all those people made me long for more… that I can’t have. As a result, my motivation is going downhill and I have even started to have tendencies to roll back to my depression. At this point I’m even questioning whether I should be learning Japanese at all. I do find learning the language enjoyable, more than any other I have learned but after a certain point it just feels like building myself a pair of gorgeous wings but never actually getting to fly with them.

The worst part is that I have been ghosted by a couple of girls after having talked with them for a solid month. That really was the final fatal blow, because I find it nearly impossible to form any form of friendship with Japanese people from such an app. I know every Japanese person is different as an individual and that I should not generalize, but the blunt truth is this. I had an immense source of motivation and I destroyed it all on my own by downloading a damn app.

Maybe I shouldn’t have started using this app. Maybe I would have been better off just staying in that anime bubble. At least I would have managed to keep my motivation intact. Or maybe I’m just being paranoid… I don’t know anymore. I’m just looking sooo bad for a way to get my motivation back on track.

Sorry if the post is too long, I just needed to sit down and write all this. I know all of this probably doesn’t even make sense to most of you but it’s just the way I feel. If anyone has any experience that is even remotely close to mine I would love to have any feedback. Thank you all in advance!