61% of Young People Now Watch TV With Subtitles

Gone are the days when subtitles were for the elderly, or people watching a show in a foreign language. According to a new study, 61% of people aged 18-24 watch TV and movies with subtitles — even when the show or film is in their native language. Given how the dialogue in Hollywood productions keeps getting quieter while the background music keeps getting louder (we’re looking at you, Christopher Nolan) the results of this survey are hardly surprising. Interestingly, only 13% of people 50-64 years old use subtitles, while 22% of people over the age of 65 activate this feature. This could be because people in those age groups are less likely to watch action films, and that’s the genre that tends to have the biggest sound discrepancy.

Of course, people took to social media to express their surprise at the results of this survey. One person wrote, “Surprised at how few OAPs watch TV with the subtitles on; personally, I (22) am unable to watch TV w/o subtitles now as I’ve spent that much time watching stuff with my grandmother, who needs subtitles cos she both can’t afford and can’t be bothered to get her hearing aids fixed.” While another aptly wrote, “I don’t, but I feel like I should do depending on what I’m watching. Yellowstone is hard to watch without subtitles.”

Another social media user posed the question, “I wonder if this is more to do with the audio quality of more modern productions? Older gens watching older shows that don’t have this issue? Watching shows from b4 2015 seem to be better in terms of voice whereas I actually struggle to hear speech on new Netflix shows etc?” While another was all of us when expressing, “Phew — I thought it was just me getting old, but perhaps it really is a combination of actors mumbling and sound editors allowing music and effects to make dialogue hard to catch.” So, if you find yourself needing to turn on subtitles — don’t worry, it’s definitely not just you!