Subtitles have evolved—and Gen Z can’t get enough of them, for more reasons than you may think.

Subtitles have evolved—and Gen Z can’t get enough of them, for more reasons than you may think. There’s a misconception that Gen Z isn’t reading, but with subtitles, the gen is likely consuming millions of words a year. In fact, a Stagetext survey “found that in the 18-25 age group, four out of five use subtitles all or part of the time, despite having fewer hearing problems than older generations.” For shows like Stranger Things, closed captioning became a meme-ified phenomenon with accounts posting screen grabs of the most bizarre descriptions such as “wet footsteps squelch” and “desiccated withering.” But the reason Gen Z loves subtitles goes beyond memes: the gen makes use of reading text while watching movies/TV to keep up with murmuring dialogue, to distinguish thick accents (looking at you Peaky Blinders), to get a headstart on a scene and go back to looking at their phone, or because of the increased interest in foreign content with shows like Squid Game and popular animes like JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. YPulse’s Local/Global Citizenship report data shows 79% of Gen Z agrees, “It doesn’t matter what country a TV show / movie is from, if it’s good I’ll watch it.” (The Telegraph)