The Current - Why Gen Z loves subtitles

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

A new survey shows that younger generations are watching TV with the subtitles way more than older people. Gen Z journalist Isabel Brooks says she gets why. Young people are watching in a noisy, distracted, TikTok-ified world. But that doesn't mean she likes it.

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Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Red, like Green Light, movies with subtitles. Green. I agree. I struggle without having any subtitles on screen. People get really weird about it. People do get really weird about it. Ask anyone if they prefer the subtitles on or off when they're watching TV.

You're likely to get an earful. They can't live without them, or they hate having words cluttering up their screen. There's also a lot of. generational difference to this. A survey released this week by the Associated Press showed that younger people are much more likely to turn the captions on. There are reasons aren't always the same as for Gen X and Boomers. For older generations, it's often because they find the audio muddy or the accent hard to understand, but for Generation Zed, it's much more likely because they're watching somewhere noisy or they're busy doing

something else at the same time. And TikTok, where we found that exchange that we heard just a moment ago, is playing a big role in this as well. Isabel Brooks is a 26-year-old freelance writer in London, wrote a column about this for The Guardian. Isabel, good morning. Good morning. You said in your column that you used to believe there were two kinds of people, people who were using subtitles when necessary, and then unappreciative Philistines who used them for no good reason.

Are you a subtitle person? No, I'm not, but I used to think that was normal, I suppose. suppose. And now, recently with these surveys coming out, I realize I'm actually not normal for my age group. I was going to say, do you feel kind of lonely being an anti-subtitle person at 26? Yeah, and I feel a bit pretentious, I suppose, to be fighting, to be asking people to turn the subtitles off. So people listening may have had these debates in their own homes. I might have had this debate in my own home. Why do people in your life, say to you that they want to have the subtitles on when they're watching television?

So many different reasons, but it could be accents, like wanting to understand accents, if English isn't your first language. It could be wanting to double screen. So a lot of people obviously go on their phone while watching TV now, as I'm sure you're aware. And that allows people to multitask, and it's more stimulating, I guess. Yes. Another reason might just be because, yeah, because if they're watching something on the tube or like commuting to work, for instance, then they'd want the subtitles on if they don't have earphones. I want to get to some of those specifics. How does this break down in your own family? Your sister's a filmmaker, is that right? Yeah, my sister's a filmmaker and she swears by subtitles. She loves them. Her and her girlfriend watch them watch with subtitles all the time.

What is that about? I don't know, because she definitely didn't used to when we were younger, so that's been a change, and she's a filmmaker, so I suppose she cares about the, like, purity of the audiovisual experience, you know. Do you understand where she's coming from? I do, and I actually, I don't, like, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't not understand it, but also when we're at home and we're in the living room, like, over Christmas, I will argue with her to have. the soft title was turned off. Try to get your hand on the remote to figure out how to turn them off. Yeah, exactly. You mentioned double screening.

And some of this is about the fact that we're trying to do many different things all at the same time. There was a woman on TikTok who posted a little bit of fun about this double screening, which is watching a couple of different things at the same time. Have a listen to this. Now, you know you have some audacity to put subtitles on the TV show or the movie that you're watching and not even read the words because you can. busy scrolling on your phone. Me too, though.

Some audacity to do that. Why do you think so many people, especially, but not exclusively younger people, are turning the subtitles on because they're watching while distracted. They're not actually paying attention to the thing that they're watching, but it's sort of there in the background. I think it's because it's easy to keep up with the show, like in short fragments, and it's like it improves the speed at which you're able to both,

absorb what's happening in the film or the TV program and look at your phone. So you're like flicking between the two, making a very like stimulating watching experience and absorbing that information very quickly, if that makes sense. It does. Does it make sense to you? Again, as somebody who said that these people are either, you know, rational people or they're unappreciative of the art of what they're watching? Well, I think I used to think that. And now I realize that when I am forced to watch with subtitles. I do that with my phone and it's actually not a very nice watching experience and I do it with shows that maybe I don't like or respect as much,

which, you know, is snobby in itself, but I guess I, if I'm like really keen on a, on a show, then I'd want to put my phone down and I'd want to be immersed completely in the actors and their faces and the, and the music and like the feeling of it. And I find that, reading content either on my phone or on the bottom of the screen will detract from that. One of the things you wrote about in the piece was the influence of social media on this. We're not just talking about watching, you know, broadcast television, that if you are on social media, you see a lot of subtitles as well. Have a listen to how one young person described this on TikTok. Does anybody else watch their TV shows with subtitles because they can't really pay

attention without them? Like TikTok is so hardwired in our brain that already is. need captions that you're like, wow, I actually have no idea what this person's saying without captions. So for people who aren't hardwired into TikTok, and they're not watching a lot of online videos, how pervasive are subtitles and social media videos? Oh my God, they're automatically embedded now, I think. You can't, you don't have the option when you're watching a TikTok to turn them off if they're, if the creators put them on there. And they're, they're on almost like every Instagram video or TikTok that you come across most of the time

in some form there'll be text captions tell me but and I don't want to keep meaning to go back to your own personal life but tell me about the conversations that you've had with your other roommate about the TikTok effect

well my flatmate she's a keen TikToker like she spends sometimes you know we're talking seven eight hours a day on TikTok and she used to not like subtitles either and then has recently just like started using them while watching TV without

really knowing why and I think it's because it's it feels more weird not to have subtitles than to have them so like there's that meme where it's like I can't hear without my subtitles you know you can't actually use your ears without reading what the actors are saying which is kind of true it's become true what do you think what do you think we're losing in that I mean and there are benefits for any number of reasons people might not understand the accent, people might be learning the language, people, you might be in a noisy place. Maybe you're, as you said, you're commuting and you don't want to be the person who's listening to something without headphones on because you forgot your headphones at home. But if you have

the subtitles on and you don't especially need them, what do you think we are losing in watching something on a screen? It's hard to know. I would say I don't want to be like ominous or anything about it, but I guess it speaks to a literalness in how we absorb culture. Like we need everything very much spelled out for us, maybe, and we need things to be clear and, yeah, like, given to us in kind of manageable packets that we can then download quickly and efficiently. And I think that subtitles are encouraging that. Are there TV experiences, TV watching experiences that you've had that would have been different had the subtitles been turned on? Yes.

I mean, for instance, I was at the cinema on Monday watching one battle after another. And the first thing I noticed when it came on was that I couldn't, I had to get used to the fact that the subtitle, there were no subtitles at the cinema. And I had to like attune to that and like really focus on the, the, the, what the actors were saying. Like, pay attention. Yeah, yeah. Was it enjoyable? Yeah, I mean, it was great.

And, like, maybe I didn't hear everything, every tiny little snippet of conversation, but it felt kind of more authentic because of that. And I know there's a lot of, like, mumblecore actors who, like, don't necessarily enunciate very clearly, but they're clearly doing that on purpose. And I find it interesting that we can't accept that. Like, we have to know everything

and not miss a beat in order to enjoy something which I think is I don't know I mean does that do you lose something some kind of in something ineffable from our TV watching experience by by watching it like that I'm not sure you also said just finally you said something interesting earlier which was that this is in some ways just about us just trying to absorb stuff there's I mean we were talking about this in the office yesterday somebody was saying comparing it to you know listening to podcasts at twice the same speed because you just want to get through the podcast. Yeah. That if you're watching something that you don't really want to watch, but it's on and you feel like you should watch it because everybody else has watched it. That you watch it with, what is that about? I mean, that's, that's so interesting because that makes, makes it seem like a tick box exercise, a tick box exercise where you're, you're wanting to keep up with culture by simply completing

things. And then you can put it on your like portfolio that you've seen it and then use it in conversation on Twitter or on Instagram that you've seen this program rather than actually think about your own reaction for yourself, I don't know. And as you said at the end of the piece, I mean, this is in some ways just, TV used to be about enjoyment, right? It used to be fun. Yeah.

And more like participatory in that your emotions would be a big part of your experience of it rather than just what happened and what was said, I think. Isabel, thanks for talking to us about this. This is, as I said, a battle in many homes across this nation. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Matt. Isabel Brooks is a freelance writer. She's in London.

You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.