This is an opinion piece. The views are the author’s own.
I used to think subtitles were for people who couldn’t hear. Then I tried watching a prestige drama at a normal volume and missed every third line. Now the captions stay on, and I’m not going back.
I’m not alone. A 2022 Preply survey of 1,265 Americans found that about half say they watch entertainment with subtitles on most of the time. Among Gen Z, the figure was 70%. This is no longer a niche accessibility setting. It’s how a lot of us watch TV.
The Problem Is the Sound, Not Your Ears
The reasons people gave in that survey are telling. Roughly 72% cited muddled audio, and 61% said accents can be hard to follow. A separate 78% said loud background music makes dialogue hard to hear. Only 18% said they use subtitles to learn a language.
My read: most people aren’t reading along out of necessity. They’re reading along because the soundtrack seems to be mixed for a cinema, then squeezed through two tiny speakers on a thin flat-panel TV. The dialogue gets buried under music and explosions, and we’re expected to ride the volume button all night.
Why I’d Rather Fix It With Captions
You could argue the fix belongs upstream, with better sound mixes. I agree. But until that happens, captions are the one tool that works on nearly every show, service and device we own.
They also let you watch quietly after the kids are asleep, and they help you catch the name of a character you’d otherwise spend half the episode guessing at. Almost 3 in 10 people in the survey (29%) said they use subtitles so they won’t disturb others.
The Small Cost
Yes, reading takes a little attention. The first few nights feel odd. After that, most people stop noticing. If a scene is mostly visual, you glance up and nothing is lost.
So here’s my modest proposal: stop treating subtitles as an apology. Leave them on by default, and let the person who wants them off be the one who goes to the settings menu. The rest of us will finally know what the character just said.
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