My son is 7 and learning Spanish. It's the reason this game exists. When I went looking for what the research says about kids learning a second language, some of it confirmed what I'd heard. Some of it flatly didn't.
Here are the three claims I kept running into, and what I found for each.
The short version
One of the largest studies on this used an online grammar quiz taken by about 670,000 English speakers. The researchers concluded that the ability to learn a language's grammar stays strong until late adolescence, and that people who start as children are more likely to end up sounding native (Hartshorne, Tenenbaum & Pinker, 2018).
The catch is that this was about people immersed in a language, often living in it, not a kid doing a few minutes of vocabulary a day. It supports starting young. It doesn't promise that starting young with any method gets you fluency.
This is the one I had to unlearn. For years, the popular story was that bilingual kids get a "brain boost," better focus and self-control, from switching between languages. There was real research behind it (Bialystok, 2011).
Then people looked harder. A 2021 analysis pulled together studies of roughly 23,000 children aged 3 to 17. The bilingual advantage it found was tiny, and once the researchers corrected for the tendency of journals to publish only positive results, it was about zero (Lowe et al., 2021). An earlier study in adults found no consistent advantage either (Paap & Greenberg, 2013).
So I don't think learning Spanish will make my son smarter, and I'd be wary of anyone selling it that way. The reasons I care about are simpler: he'll be able to talk to more people, and understand a bit more of the world around him. Plus he thinks it's fun.
This one matters to me, since I made an app with Spanish in it.
In a well-known experiment, 9-month-old American babies heard Mandarin from a native speaker in twelve short play sessions over about a month. Babies who heard it from a live person learned to tell apart Mandarin speech sounds. Babies who got the exact same speakers on video or audio learned nothing measurable (Kuhl, Tsao & Liu, 2003).
Those were babies, not grade schoolers, so it's not a direct comparison. But the point stuck with me: language is social. People learn it by using it with other people.
What a screen can do well is practice. Vocabulary in particular responds to quizzing and to spreading practice over days. In one classroom study, fifth graders who learned vocabulary in two sessions a week apart remembered more five weeks later than kids who learned it all at once (Sobel, Cepeda & Kapler, 2011). Recalling a word helps more than rereading it, too (Karpicke, Blunt & Smith, 2016).
That's how Spanish works in Super Trivia Kids: everyday words, each one read out loud, and kids play side by side so they can say the words to each other. It's practice to go with real Spanish, not a replacement for it.
Earlier tends to be easier. A large study of about 670,000 people found that the ability to learn grammar stays strong until late adolescence, and that people who start as children are more likely to sound native. Grade school is a natural time to begin, especially alongside real conversation.
Probably not. A 2021 analysis of studies covering about 23,000 children found the "bilingual advantage" in focus and self-control was tiny, and about zero after correcting for publication bias. Better reasons to learn Spanish are talking with more people, culture, and family.
Not on their own. In a well-known study, babies learned new speech sounds from a live speaker but not from the same speaker on video. Apps and videos work best as practice between real conversations, especially for vocabulary, which responds well to quizzing and spaced review.
You don't need to be fluent to help. Learn a few words alongside your child, choose practice that reads words out loud so they hear real pronunciation, and look for real conversation: a class, a relative, a neighbor or a bilingual sitter. That conversation does most of the work.
About this article. I'm a parent and a software engineer, not a researcher, teacher or doctor. I wrote this from the published studies listed below, each linked to the original paper so you can check my reading of it. Where a study was small, or done with a different age group, I've said so.
40 Christmas and winter trivia questions for kids, with answers. An easier round for K–2 and a harder one for 3–5, plus tips that help it stick.
What research says about quizzing, flash cards and spaced practice for grade school kids: what holds up, what's thinner than it sounds.
A software engineer whose kids barely use screens reads the AAP guidance and the research on screen time, quality and playing together.