The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research<\/a>: People under age 45 are more likely to use them than older adults.<\/p>\nThe poll finds that about 4 in 10 adults under 45 use subtitles at least \u201coften\u201d 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 \u201cnever\u201d use subtitles.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
That makes sense to David Barber, a sound editor and mixer and president of the Motion Picture Sound Editors.<\/p>\n
\u201cPart of it is cultural,\u201d Barber says. \u201cWhat the younger kids are doing is, a lot of them will multitask. They\u2019ll listen to music while they\u2019re watching a show. So they\u2019re catching bits and pieces of this, bits and pieces of that. I think they probably are half-listening and half-watching. It\u2019s an interesting phenomenon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Subtitles help catch every word<\/p>\n
Many people, regardless of age, use closed captions simply to better catch dialogue.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s accent.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I want to know most of the words that are being said and the audio\u2019s a bit iffy, then that\u2019s the moment I\u2019ll mostly use captions,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Adrian Alaniz, 31, of Midland, Texas, thinks his hearing was slightly damaged by the concerts he attended when he was younger. With subtitles, he can be sure he is understanding what is going on, particularly if he is eating something crunchy like a bag of chips.<\/p>\n
In the animated shows Alaniz watches, the subtitles are particularly helpful for translation. There have been times, he says, when dubbed audio and subtitles do not match. \u201cSometimes the audio doesn\u2019t come across as clearly and the subtitles do help in that matter,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Bad audio or background noise?<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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. \u201cSo you\u2019re not listening on a stellar sound system to start with,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Another factor is performance-based. <\/p>\n
Actors have \u201ca more internal and close\u201d style of emoting than they did decades ago, says sound designer Karol Urban, and sometimes that makes it difficult to discern dialogue.<\/p>\n
And there is now simply a lot more sound competing with dialogue, Urban says. \u201cBack in the day there were a lot less sound effects, less music swells,\u201d she notes. \u201cWhen you add more things under dialogue, you\u2019re adding more frequencies and things that can interfere with dialogue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Davis, of Tampa, Florida, points to the show \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d as one instance where she often turns on subtitles so she is not constantly adjusting the volume.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of times the speaking in that show is low and fits the dark environment if it\u2019s in a certain scene,\u201d she says. \u201cThen the next scene will be just music and it\u2019s blasting through the walls.\u201d<\/p>\n
Generation gap on multitasking<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Ask a younger or older adult, though, and you could get a very different justification. <\/p>\n
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 \u2014 those 45 and older \u2014 are more likely than younger adults to say they use closed captions because they have difficulty understanding accents or because of a hearing impairment.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Patricia Gill, 67, of Columbus, Tennessee, does not use closed captions. But when her grandson comes over, Gill often notices he has subtitles on his phone when watching movies.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a typical almost-teenager, he just likes watching his phone,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
The two have different approaches when it comes to subtitles. If she is interested in a show and misses an important line, she goes back and rewinds it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m old school,\u201d she says. \u201cI just like the regular, basic stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Sanders reported from Washington. AP Polling Editor Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux in Washington contributed to this report.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
The AP-NORC poll of 1,182 adults was conducted Aug. 21-25, using a sample drawn from NORC\u2019s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Taylor Heine, 35, is often multitasking when she watches TV shows or movies at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[74555,5300,9892,74551,96,74553,2839,74554,23194,74552,24960,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-164325","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-adrian-alaniz","9":"tag-ap-top-news","10":"tag-associated-press","11":"tag-david-barber","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-johnson-city","14":"tag-movies","15":"tag-patricia-gill","16":"tag-public-opinion","17":"tag-taylor-heine","18":"tag-tennessee","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom","21":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}