Why So Many People Are Now Watching TV With Subtitles

Most young people watching TV with subtitles aren't deaf or hard of hearing. In Stagetext's 2021 research, 80% of 18- to 24-year-olds said they use subtitles some or all of the time, yet only 10% of that group reported being deaf, deafened or hard of hearing. So the caption boom isn't really about ears.

Turning subtitles on used to signal a hearing need. Now it's closer to a default, and the shift is sharpest among the youngest viewers, the ones least likely to have a clinical reason for it. This piece pulls together what the polling actually shows, walks through the reasons people give, and ties it back to a wider pattern you've probably felt yourself: a growing preference for reading over listening.

How common has subtitle use actually become?

The Stagetext figure is the one that gets quoted most, and separate polling backs up the direction of travel. When YouGov asked UK viewers in February 2023 whether they generally keep subtitles on for shows and films in their own language, 61% of 18- to 24-year-olds said they did. That age group came out on top in both surveys, despite different questions and different samples.

The pattern holds in the United States too. The language-learning company Preply surveyed 1,265 Americans in May 2022 and found 50% watch content with subtitles most of the time. Among Gen Z that jumped to 70%, with millennials at 53%. A follow-up survey of 1,503 Americans in May 2023 put the overall figure at 51%, and reported that 96% of Gen Z respondents used subtitles, up from 70% the year before.

Here's what makes it striking. The people most likely to need captions for hearing reasons aren't the ones driving the trend. UK population data the Office for National Statistics published in 2018, cited by Stagetext, found that more than 40% of over-50s have hearing loss, rising to more than 70% of people over 70. Yet older viewers report the lowest subtitle use. The boom is led by the group least likely to have a medical reason for it.

Subtitle use by age group

Why people really watch with subtitles

The surveys ask people directly, and the answers cluster into a handful of reasons. Few of them have much to do with hearing loss.

Dialogue is genuinely harder to hear

This is the big one. In Preply's 2022 survey, 55% of Americans agreed it's harder to hear dialogue in shows and films than it used to be, and 78% reported struggling to follow dialogue because of loud background music. The 2023 follow-up found that share rising, with 61% blaming background music for drowning out the words.

It isn't just viewers imagining it. SlashFilm's Ben Pearson interviewed a roster of Oscar-winning sound editors for a 2022 feature on why film dialogue got so hard to understand. Their verdict was that there's no single villain. Sound designer Mark Mangini called it "a gumbo, an accumulation of problems that have been exacerbated over the last 10 years."

A few threads ran through their accounts. Acting has shifted toward naturalistic, mumbled, under-the-breath delivery that's hard to capture cleanly. Modern mixes pack in hundreds of tracks, so score and dialogue end up fighting for room. Theatrical mixes then get squashed for streaming and funnelled through two thin speakers in a soundbar, which one editor compared to "taking a beautiful steak and dragging it through the dirt." Whatever leaves the studio reaches you on a flatscreen or a phone, far from the calibrated room it was mixed in.

You're watching on a phone, not a sofa

Much of today's viewing happens somewhere other than a quiet living room. In Preply's 2022 survey, 57% of Americans said they watch shows, films or online video in public, rising to 74% among Gen Z. Forty-three percent admitted to watching on public transport. Captions let you follow a show on a crowded train without headphones, or with the sound off entirely.

The reverse situation matters just as much. In the same survey, 29% said they keep subtitles on at home specifically so they can watch quietly without disturbing the people around them. Loud or silent, the phone-and-headphone era makes text a practical hedge against whatever room you happen to be in. Streaming makes captions easy to reach too: Preply found that 62% of Americans use subtitles more on streaming services than on regular TV.

Accents and second languages

Subtitles also do the job they were built for, which is helping people follow speech they'd otherwise miss. In Preply's 2022 survey, 61% of Americans said they'd used subtitles to better understand actors with an accent, and the 2023 survey put that figure at 70%. Shows with strong regional accents, from "Peaky Blinders" to "Derry Girls," topped the list of programmes people found hard to follow.

For language learners the appeal is more deliberate. Roughly one in four Americans in the 2022 survey said they use subtitles to help learn a language, and the 2023 survey found a similar share had used them to pick up a new one. Pairing audio with on-screen text reinforces words you're still learning to recognise.

It helps you focus

Plenty of people turn subtitles on simply to pay better attention. In Preply's 2022 survey, 27% said captions help keep them focused while they juggle multiple screens, kids, pets and work. The 2023 survey found that rather than distracting viewers, 81% said subtitles more often help them understand what they're watching. Reading along anchors your eyes when your mind might otherwise wander to your phone.

Why people use subtitles, at a glance

The bigger pattern: we'd rather read than listen

Step back, and the caption habit looks like one corner of something larger. The reasons people give, that text is easier to scan in a noisy or quiet space, that it holds attention better, that it lets them watch on their own terms, are the same reasons many of us now prefer reading a message to playing the audio.

Online video shows the same instinct. Preply's 2023 survey found that 46% of Americans prefer to watch clips on YouTube or TikTok with subtitles, and 29% would scroll straight past a video that has no captions at all. Creators noticed a while ago, which is why burned-in captions are now standard on short-form video: so much of the audience watches with the sound off.

The same logic runs past entertainment and into your chats. Preply's survey of messaging habits found that 40% of voice-note users think voice notes could replace the traditional phone call, so audio is climbing in personal messaging too. And yet the people happiest to send a voice note often want to read it rather than listen, for exactly the reasons they caption their shows. It's faster to scan, easier in a quiet office or a loud street, and simpler to search later. It's the same relief people describe when reading beats listening for anything longer than a sentence, and the same friction behind the quiet dread of a four-minute voice note.

That instinct is what Transcribbit is built around. You forward a WhatsApp voice note and get clean, readable text back in seconds, so you can skim it like a subtitle instead of sitting through the playback. The free tier covers 50 transcriptions a month, and your audio is deleted straight after. Try it free and read your next voice note instead of playing it.

Frequently asked questions

Why do people watch TV with subtitles if they're not deaf?

Survey data points to several reasons that have nothing to do with hearing loss. Dialogue is harder to hear in modern audio mixes, more viewing happens on phones in noisy or quiet settings, accents and foreign content are easier to follow with text, and many people focus and retain more when they read along. In Stagetext's 2021 research, only 10% of the 18- to 24-year-olds who used subtitles said they were deaf or hard of hearing.

Is it true that younger people use subtitles more than older people?

Yes, consistently. Stagetext's 2021 survey found 80% of 18- to 24-year-olds used subtitles some or all of the time, and a 2023 YouGov poll found 61% of that age group preferred them on. In the United States, Preply reported that 96% of Gen Z used subtitles in 2023, against roughly half of the overall population. This holds even though older viewers are far more likely to have hearing loss.

Why has dialogue become harder to hear in films and TV?

According to sound professionals interviewed by SlashFilm, it's a combination of factors: more naturalistic, quieter acting, mixes crowded with hundreds of tracks and loud scores, theatrical mixes that get compressed for streaming, and home setups with thin TV or soundbar speakers that can't reproduce the original mix. In Preply's surveys, a majority of viewers agreed dialogue is harder to hear than it used to be, with most blaming loud background music.

Do subtitles actually help with focus and comprehension?

Most viewers say so. In Preply's 2023 survey, 81% reported that subtitles more often help them understand content rather than distract them, and 27% in the 2022 survey said captions help them stay focused while multitasking. Stagetext also points to evidence that subtitles can support literacy and aid concentration for some neurodivergent viewers.

Is watching with subtitles the same as preferring to read voice notes?

They come from the same place. Both are about wanting words you can scan at your own pace instead of audio you have to sit through in real time. Preply found that 46% of Americans already prefer their online videos captioned, and 29% will scroll straight past a video with no captions at all. The voice message statistics tell the same story from the messaging side: audio is everywhere, but a large share of people would rather read it than listen to it.

Final thoughts

The caption boom isn't a story about failing ears. It's a story about control. People want to catch every word, watch on a crowded train, follow an unfamiliar accent, and keep their attention from drifting, and text on screen does all four at once.

That's the same pull that makes a written voice note easier to deal with than a spoken one. Transcribbit turns forwarded WhatsApp voice notes into accurate, searchable text in over 50 languages, with a free tier of 50 transcriptions a month and no audio kept afterwards. Read your next one instead of replaying it, at transcribbit.io.

References

1. YouGov survey supports Stagetext's findings (Stagetext, 2021) - stagetext.org
2. Survey: Why America Is Obsessed with Subtitles (Preply, 2022) - preply.com
3. Why America is (Still) Obsessed With Subtitles (Preply, 2023) - preply.com
4. Here's Why Movie Dialogue Has Gotten More Difficult To Understand (SlashFilm, 2022) - slashfilm.com
5. Voice notes may be the new phone call, according to 40% of Americans (Preply, 2024) - preply.com