In Our Subtitles Era
Watching TV with closed captions is gaining popularity. What’s with the need to read?
Confession time: I’m a millennial who has never watched TV with subtitles. *Cue gasps.* However, given the number of times my husband and I turn to each other during our weekend binge-watching seshes to ask, “Did you catch that?” it’s clear that a shift toward closed captioning could be in our future.
I’ve since learned that it’s not just us. Dialogue in shows and movies has become increasingly harder to hear—a problem exacerbated by slimmer TVs, compressed audio for streaming, and, of course, inconsistent sound quality across apps and devices, leaving viewers with the op to either turn up the volume or turn on the subtitles.
Yet, somewhere between the final season of Game of Thrones and our current roster of culture-defining but often difficult-to-understand shows (think Succession, Ted Lasso and The Bear, among others), an unexpected trend emerged. Using closed captions became less of a quick fix to decipher garbled sounds and more of a, well, preference.
According to a recent survey by Preply, half of the 1,200+ Americans that responded use subtitles or captions most of the time. And young people are leading the charge. The same report reveals Gen Zers and millennials are much more likely to be frequent caption users at 70% and 53%, respectively, while older respondents such as Gen X and Baby Boomers are least likely to join the movement. Blame it on the popularity of TikTok and its word-plastered videos, but subtitles have suddenly taken over TV.
So, we wanted to know: Are Raleighites saying yes to the text too? I tapped a few locals for their thoughts on the subtitle craze to find out. “At this point, I rely on them and feel I can’t ‘hear’ whatever I’m watching without them,” said one millennial user. “I definitely pick up on things I wouldn’t if not for subtitles. Whether it’s a character with an accent I can’t quite understand or a distraction that wouldn’t allow me to hear the TV, I can at least still read what’s going on.”
Indeed, closed captions are ideal for loud environments—or, alternatively, when it’s not appropriate to turn the sound up. “My husband and I both like subtitles when we’re watching TV because we have the fan on (and now the baby monitor), and we don’t want to turn the TV up so loud,” another millennial told me. For her, captions truly enhance the viewing experience. “I think we started using them while watching The West Wing, which tracks,” she said, “and you do catch little funny things with it!”
Others don’t find subtitles quite so charming, but resort to them nonetheless. After staring at a screen all day, “the last thing I want to do is read my TV,” laments one Xennial. “But if I can’t freakin’ understand them, I’m left with no option.”
In fact, she often feels so torn between watching and reading that she attempts to do both. “I don’t want to miss the art of the theatrical performances so I literally rewind scenes where I truly had to read to ‘hear’ and watch their faces,” the reluctant closed captioner reveals. “The time commitment is ridiculous.”
Will this words-on-screens frenzy ever fizzle? If streaming apps continue to roll out speech enhancers (such as Prime Video’s new dialogue boost feature), perhaps we’ll finally have the technology to make out what our favorite characters are mumbling. *Breathes sigh of relief.* Until then, we might have to continue reading what we watch.
