From noisy rooms to multitasking habits, younger viewers are embracing subtitles at far higher rates than older generations, a new survey shows.
Closed captions or subtitles can be an acquired taste. Some people find them distracting, and even family members in the same household can be in disagreement, resulting in tussles for the remote. But Heine, who lives in Johnson City, Tennessee, is in good company, according to a new survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research: People under age 45 are more likely to use them than older adults.
Younger adults multitask, older adults seek clarity
By the numbers:
The poll finds that about 4 in 10 adults under 45 use subtitles at least “often” when watching TV or movies, compared with about 3 in 10 adults older than 45. Those 60 and older are especially likely to say they “never” use subtitles.
The poll suggests many young adults use subtitles because they are watching in noisy environments, whereas older adults choose them to better hear or understand what is being said.
Most subtitle-users, 55%, say they use closed captions because they want to catch every word. About 4 in 10 say they do so because of difficulty understanding accents or because they are watching a foreign movie or show.
The poll found that about 3 in 10 U.S. adults use subtitles because they are watching in a noisy environment, while roughly one-quarter say they do so because of poor audio quality.
What they’re saying:
That makes sense to David Barber, a sound editor and mixer and president of the Motion Picture Sound Editors.
“Part of it is cultural,” Barber says. “What the younger kids are doing is, a lot of them will multitask. They’ll listen to music while they’re watching a show. So they’re catching bits and pieces of this, bits and pieces of that. I think they probably are half-listening and half-watching. It’s an interesting phenomenon.”
Ariaunna Davis, 21, says she typically uses subtitles if she is in an environment where she cannot hear the audio and does not want to blast the volume, or if she cannot understand a character’s accent.
“If I want to know most of the words that are being said and the audio’s a bit iffy, then that’s the moment I’ll mostly use captions,” she says.
Dig deeper:
Barber says there are lots of reasons why dialogue can be hard to hear, including noise distractions in home-listening environments. He also notes that speakers are often on the back of a flat-screen TV and project toward the wall. “So you’re not listening on a stellar sound system to start with,” he says.
Another factor is performance-based.
Actors have “a more internal and close” style of emoting than they did decades ago, says sound designer Karol Urban, and sometimes that makes it difficult to discern dialogue.
And there is now simply a lot more sound competing with dialogue, Urban says. “Back in the day there were a lot less sound effects, less music swells,” she notes. “When you add more things under dialogue, you’re adding more frequencies and things that can interfere with dialogue.”
Different generations turn on captions for very different reasons
Big picture view:
About one-quarter of subtitle users say they turn on captions because they are watching while multitasking. Fewer say the reason is a hearing impairment, trying to learn a new language or watching with the sound off.
Ask a younger or older adult, though, and you could get a very different justification.
Young adults who have used subtitles are more likely than those 45 and older to say they do this because they are watching in a noisy environment or watching while multitasking. Older subtitle users — those 45 and older — are more likely than younger adults to say they use closed captions because they have difficulty understanding accents or because of a hearing impairment.
About 3 in 10 adults 60 and older who use subtitles say they use closed captions because of a hearing impairment, compared with only 7% for younger adults.