The surprising reason young adults are more likely to watch movies with subtitles and closed captioning is revealed in a new poll. Using subtitles has become an increasingly common practice, with popular memes even circulating on social media about wishing they were always used in movie theaters.
According to an Associated Press poll, people younger than 45 are more likely to use subtitles than older adults. The poll’s findings are that approximately 4 out of 10 adults under the age of 45 use subtitles often, but only 3 out of 10 adults older than 45 do so. Adults 60 or older are most likely to say they never use subtitles, per the poll.
These results indicate that young adults are more prone to use subtitles because they are in noisy environments or watching movies while multitasking. The need for subtitles when watching in a noisy environment is also true on average for 3 out of 10 adults in the U.S., regardless of age.
President of the Motion Picture Sound Editors, David Barber, believes that this outcome of the poll is accurate due to cultural differences between audiences of different ages. Check out his comments below:
Part of it is cultural. 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.
These cultural differences can also be found when it comes to the hearing abilities of different ages. 3 in 10 adults who are 60 or older say they use subtitles because of their hearing impairments, but this only applies to 7% of young adults.
55% of the polled subtitle users say that closed captioning helps them better catch every word during their viewing experience. From Star Wars movies and James Cameron’s Avatar franchise to superhero films, this is especially helpful when there are many in-universe fictional terms being used.
4 in 10 adults also say they use subtitles due to not knowing the language used in a foreign movie or show or because they have difficulty understanding the actors’ accents.
Additionally, a quarter of the poll’s participants say that they rely on subtitles because of lackluster audio quality. Barber notes that since speakers are frequently on the back of flat-screen televisions and projecting toward the wall, “you’re not listening on a stellar sound system to start with.”
Sound designer Karol Urban also adds that actors perform in “a more internal and close” way than they used to, which can be challenging on top of all the other sounds dialogue now has to compete with.
Back in the day there were a lot less sound effects, less music swells. When you add more things under dialogue, you’re adding more frequencies and things that can interfere with dialogue.
21-year-old Ariaunna Davis, who was interviewed by AP for the poll, explains that HBO’s Game of Thrones does this, as “A lot of times the speaking in that show is low and fits the dark environment if it’s in a certain scene. Then the next scene will be just music and it’s blasting through the walls.”
With many exciting science-fiction movies coming in 2026, along with films in a variety of other genres, the use of subtitles will continue to be a compelling issue, especially as the way audiences watch content continues to evolve.
This story originally appeared on Screenrant
