And it is only getting easier to learn a language now too. What FINALLY got me over the hump with Spanish was YouTube and discovering resources like Dreaming Spanish (leveled content for comprehensive input that probably exist in most major languages). Content that was fun and at my level.
Mix into that a weekly lesson with italki from your home and you can learn any language at any age.
I logged in just to second your recommendation. If you want to learn Spanish (or or French) 'Dreaming Spanish' is just excellent.
In addition it seems to be a good way to get rid of short video addiction. I don't use instagram or tiktok myself, but have a friend who did. Now she watches Dreaming Spanish instead. She is eight month in. Her husband just told me the whole family was flabbergasted when they where in Spain this summer and she answered in Spanish to a waiter in a restaurant.
My 10 year old daughter uses it, too. She likes to watch the Let's play videos and has watched the Stardew Valley series twice. So thats 66 hours x 2 = 130 hours watching Spanish videos. Her vocabulary is now a bit strange for a beginner, though. We recently walked through a garden and she was pointing out la regadera, la semilla, plantar algo.
I just logged in just to recommend Dreaming Spanish (and now Dreaming French apparently). It's absolutely the right way to learn a language IMO. If anyone reading this is lost on what resource to look for to learn Spanish or French, I urge you to try it. (Of course I have no interest here except see them succeed on this brilliant idea).
There are so many tools now that didn't exist even when I started. I don't know how people managed without being able to use translation apps, for example. Or in the case of Japanese, being able to take a picture of text, and select the kanji for lookup. Life. Changing.
I'm also old enough to remember when getting listening materials required going to the library for cassette tapes. Today, you can talk with a wide selection of native speakers, listen to essentially infinite audio and video content, and immerse yourself in a culture halfway around the world for the price of an internet connection.
> I don't know how people managed without being able to use translation apps, for example.
I learned English with no Internet or smartphones, just school teachers, coursebooks and physical dictionaries. I wrote down new words from the dictionary into my lined notebook with a pen, solved the exercises from the book, translated texts by looking up words in the dictionary, searching for the page and the entry alphabetically. The coursebook came with an audio cassette. It was very much possible, but of course there are much more tools today. Spaced repetition software like Anki for vocabulary learning is a huge improvement I think.