Up to 69% of consumers prefer watching videos with the sound off in public spaces, and 25% do so even in private settings, according to a Verizon Media and Publicis Media study cited in a 2024 peer-reviewed eye-tracking paper (Szarkowska et al., PLoS One 2024). That habit is why short-form video has become a reading medium: 63% of US adults under 30 prefer subtitles on even in a language they know (YouGov 2023), YouTube’s automatic captions now cover 67 languages on long-form videos and Shorts (YouTube Help Center 2026), and Shorts alone average over 200 billion daily views (Alphabet Q2 2025 earnings remarks). Underneath the trend sits a hard accessibility baseline: 430 million people worldwide need rehabilitation for disabling hearing loss (WHO, Deafness and hearing loss fact sheet 2026). For the broadcast side of the same problem, see our real-time subtitling latency statistics. We aggregated data from Pew Research Center, YouGov, Stagetext and The Audience Agency, Meta, TikTok, YouTube and Alphabet, the World Health Organization, NIDCD, the FCC, the US Department of Justice, and peer-reviewed studies in PLoS One, JMIR, American Journal of Audiology, Psychological Science and other journals.
TL;DR
- Up to 69% of consumers prefer sound-off video in public spaces, 25% in private (Verizon Media and Publicis Media study, cited in Szarkowska et al., PLoS One 2024).
- 80% of people react negatively when feed-based mobile video ads play loud sound unexpectedly (Meta, Facebook for Business video ads post).
- Captioned video ads increased view time by an average of 12% in Meta’s internal tests (Meta, Facebook for Business video ads post).
- 63% of US adults under 30 prefer subtitles on for TV in a language they know, versus 38% of all adults (YouGov 2023).
- 42% of UK respondents cite concentration as a reason to use captions or subtitles (The Audience Agency for Stagetext 2023).
- TikTok launched auto captions on April 6, 2021, in American English and Japanese (TikTok Newsroom 2021).
- YouTube’s automatic captions list 67 languages and work on Shorts (YouTube Help Center 2026).
- YouTube Shorts average over 200 billion daily views (Alphabet Q2 2025 earnings remarks).
- 63% of US adults aged 18-29 use TikTok and 80% use Instagram (Pew Research Center, Social Media Fact Sheet 2025).
- 430 million people need rehabilitation for disabling hearing loss; nearly 2.5 billion will have some hearing loss by 2050 (WHO fact sheet 2026).
- Removing sound raised self-rated effort from 3.07 to 4.84 on a 7-point scale for subtitled video (Szarkowska et al., PLoS One 2024).
- Speech recognition apps showed word error rates of 19-34% on English dialogue (Pragt et al., Frontiers in Digital Health 2022).
1. Sound-Off Viewing: Why Short-Form Video Became a Reading Medium
Captions on short-form video are not mainly an accessibility add-on; they are the default way a large share of viewers receive the audio track. The Verizon Media and Publicis Media study cited by Szarkowska and colleagues found that up to 69% of consumers prefer watching videos without sound in public spaces, and 25% choose to do so in private (Szarkowska et al., PLoS One 2024). In the same paper’s own sample of 168 viewers, sound-off habits were much stronger for social media than for film and TV: a mean of 3.23 versus 1.57 on a 7-point frequency scale. Participants named public transport, waiting rooms, workplaces, gyms and not waking others as reasons.
Platforms learned this early. Meta’s video ads guidance reports that 80% of people react negatively when feed-based mobile video ads play loud sound unexpectedly, and that captioned video ads increased view time by an average of 12% in internal tests (Meta, Capture Attention with Updated Features for Video Ads). The caveat is that captions are not a universal lift: a 2024 field test of 12 Facebook video variants reaching 1,032,888 users found the best performer was the shorter portrait version without subtitles, while subtitles helped the longer version hold viewers past the 25% watch mark (Pascual-Ferrá et al., JMIR 2024).
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Consumers who prefer sound-off video in public spaces | Up to 69% | Verizon Media and Publicis Media, cited in Szarkowska et al., PLoS One 2024 |
| Consumers who choose sound-off video in private settings | 25% | Verizon Media and Publicis Media, cited in Szarkowska et al., PLoS One 2024 |
| Sound-off frequency, social media videos vs films and TV (1-7 scale) | 3.23 vs 1.57 (mean) | Szarkowska et al., PLoS One 2024 |
| People reacting negatively to unexpected loud sound in feed video ads | 80% | Meta, Facebook for Business video ads post |
| View time lift from captioned video ads (internal tests) | +12% average | Meta, Facebook for Business video ads post |
| Watch time lift with captions, A&W Canada case | +25% | Meta, Facebook for Business video ads post |
| Share of video campaign value in the first 3 / first 10 seconds | Up to 47% / up to 74% | Meta, Facebook for Business video ads post |
| Facebook video message test: reach and cost | 3.34 million impressions in 4 days for US$450 (12 variants) | Pascual-Ferrá et al., JMIR 2024 |
Context note: the Meta post carries no publication date and cites Black Friday 2015 data, so its figures are the most recent available from Meta on captions, not current measurements. The Pascual-Ferrá test ran on Facebook in India for a vaccine-confidence campaign, and the authors warn the results may not transfer to TikTok or YouTube.
2. Who Turns Subtitles On: Age Is the Dividing Line
Subtitle use has shifted from a hearing-loss accommodation to a mainstream viewing preference, and the shift is led by the generation that grew up on phones. 63% of US adults under 30 prefer subtitles on when watching TV in a language they know, against 38% of all adults (YouGov, August 2023). Among under-30s, 23% say subtitles are always on and 28% have them on most of the time. Comprehension (40%) and understanding accents (40%) are the top reasons, which describes how creators talk on short-form video: fast, accented, over music.
UK data point the same way. In research by The Audience Agency for Stagetext, 54% of people used captions or subtitles for TV or online content, 42% cited concentration as a reason, and most TV and online subtitle users were under 25, more than half of whom also cited concentration (Stagetext, 2023). An earlier Sapio poll of 2,003 people for Stagetext found 67% of the public sometimes struggle to hear during TV or live performances.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| US adults preferring subtitles on (known language) | 38% (53% prefer off) | YouGov 2023 |
| Preference for subtitles on, by age | Under 30: 63%; 30-44: 37%; 45-64: 29%; 65+: 30% | YouGov 2023 |
| Under-30s with subtitles always on / on most of the time | 23% / 28% | YouGov 2023 |
| Top reasons: comprehension / understanding accents | 40% / 40% | YouGov 2023 |
| Preference for subtitles on, by group | Hispanic 54%, Black 40%, white 33% | YouGov 2023 |
| UK respondents using captions or subtitles for TV or online content | 54% | The Audience Agency for Stagetext 2023 |
| UK respondents citing concentration as a reason | 42% | The Audience Agency for Stagetext 2023 |
| GB public who sometimes struggle to hear TV or live performances | 67% (n = 2,003) | Sapio for Stagetext 2021 |
Context note: YouGov surveyed 1,000 US adult citizens from June 29 to July 5, 2023, with a margin of error of about 4 points. Most recent available data: YouGov, 2023. The Audience Agency sample was more than 2,400 people representative of the UK population, according to Stagetext’s 2025 quality research summary.
3. Platform Auto-Captions and AI Translation
The platforms have turned captioning from a creator chore into a default toggle, and in the last year moved on to machine translation and dubbing. TikTok announced auto captions on April 6, 2021, launching in American English and Japanese, with creators able to edit the text and viewers able to switch captions off (TikTok Newsroom, Introducing auto captions). YouTube’s help page now lists 67 languages for automatic captions and states that the feature works on both long-form videos and Shorts (YouTube Help, Use automatic captioning).
The frontier has moved from same-language captions to cross-language reach. YouTube’s automatic dubbing supports 29 original languages, is enabled by default for eligible creators and skips videos over 120 minutes (YouTube Help, automatic dubbing). Instagram’s Meta AI reel translations launched in October 2025 in English, Hindi, Spanish and Portuguese and added Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Marathi on January 16, 2026, for 9 languages in total (Meta Newsroom, November 2025). The cost side of this shift is covered in our captioning and subtitling market statistics.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| TikTok auto captions launch date | April 6, 2021 | TikTok Newsroom 2021 |
| TikTok auto captions launch languages | 2 (American English, Japanese) | TikTok Newsroom 2021 |
| YouTube automatic caption languages listed | 67 (long-form and Shorts) | YouTube Help Center 2026 (our count of the published list) |
| YouTube live-stream automatic captions | English channels; rolling out to channels with more than 1,000 subscribers | YouTube Help Center 2026 |
| YouTube automatic dubbing source languages | 29 | YouTube Help Center 2026 |
| YouTube automatic dubbing length limit | Videos over 120 minutes ineligible | YouTube Help Center 2026 |
| Instagram Meta AI reel translation languages | 4 at launch (October 2025), 9 from January 16, 2026 | Meta Newsroom 2025 |
Context note: YouTube’s own page warns that automatic captions “might misrepresent the spoken content due to mispronunciations, accents, dialects, or background noise” and asks creators to review them. English automatic captions also include expressive captions that render intensity in capitals and label sounds such as sighs and gasps.
4. The Audience: Short-Form Video Scale in 2025-2026
Caption design decisions now touch an enormous daily audience. YouTube Shorts average over 200 billion daily views, and in the US Shorts earn as much revenue per watch hour as traditional in-stream video (Alphabet Q2 2025 earnings remarks). By the Q3 2025 call, Sundar Pichai said US Shorts earned more revenue per watch hour than in-stream (Alphabet Q3 2025 earnings remarks). TikTok passed 1 billion monthly users in September 2021 (TikTok Newsroom, Thanks a billion). How that money reaches creators is tracked in our short-form revenue share statistics.
The audience skews young, which is exactly the group most likely to keep subtitles on (section 2). Pew’s 2025 survey of 5,022 US adults found 84% use YouTube, 50% Instagram and 37% TikTok, rising to 95%, 80% and 63% among 18-29 year olds (Pew Research Center, Social Media Fact Sheet). Among teens, 73% go on YouTube daily and 16% say they are on TikTok almost constantly (Pew Research Center, Teens, Social Media and Technology 2024).
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| YouTube Shorts daily views | Over 200 billion | Alphabet Q2 2025 earnings remarks |
| TikTok monthly users | More than 1 billion (September 2021) | TikTok Newsroom 2021 |
| US adults using YouTube / Instagram / TikTok | 84% / 50% / 37% | Pew Research Center 2025 |
| Adults 18-29 using YouTube / Instagram / TikTok | 95% / 80% / 63% | Pew Research Center 2025 |
| TikTok use by age: 30-49 / 50-64 / 65+ | 44% / 30% / 12% | Pew Research Center 2025 |
| US teens using YouTube / YouTube daily / almost constantly | 90% / 73% / 15% | Pew Research Center 2024 (n = 1,391) |
| US teens on TikTok almost constantly | 16% | Pew Research Center 2024 |
| US adults who regularly get news on TikTok | 20% (3% in 2020); 43% of under-30s | Pew Research Center 2025 |
Context note: Pew’s teen survey ran September 18 to October 10, 2024 with 1,391 respondents aged 13-17; Pew also reports that nearly half of teens say they are online almost constantly. TikTok has not published a newer global user figure on its newsroom, so 1 billion (2021) is the most recent official number. The TikTok news figure comes from Pew Research Center, September 2025; news on short-form video raises the stakes for caption accuracy.
5. Hearing Loss: The Accessibility Baseline Behind Every Caption
For hundreds of millions of viewers, captions are not a preference. Over 5% of the world’s population, or 430 million people, need rehabilitation for disabling hearing loss, including 34 million children (WHO, Deafness and hearing loss fact sheet, March 3, 2026). The WHO projects that nearly 2.5 billion people will have some degree of hearing loss by 2050, and flags over 1 billion young adults at risk of permanent, avoidable hearing loss from unsafe listening, the same demographic that dominates short-form video. Our age-related hearing loss statistics cover the older end of the curve.
In the US, about 15% of adults (37.5 million) report some trouble hearing, and disabling hearing loss rises from 5% at ages 45-54 to 55% at 75 and older (NIDCD, Quick Statistics About Hearing). Deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers are also demanding about quality: in Stagetext’s 2025 research, 85% said subtitle quality is important to them and 63% said subtitles need to be nearly perfect.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| People needing rehabilitation for disabling hearing loss | 430 million (over 5% of the world), 34 million children | WHO fact sheet 2026 |
| People projected to have some hearing loss by 2050 | Nearly 2.5 billion (700 million needing rehabilitation) | WHO fact sheet 2026 |
| Young adults at risk from unsafe listening | Over 1 billion | WHO fact sheet 2026 |
| People over 60 with disabling hearing loss | Over 25% | WHO fact sheet 2026 |
| US adults reporting some trouble hearing | About 15% (37.5 million) | NIDCD, Quick Statistics |
| US disabling hearing loss by age | 45-54: 5%; 55-64: 10%; 65-74: 22%; 75+: 55% | NIDCD (NHANES 2015-2020) |
| DHH respondents who say subtitle quality is important | 85% (n = 94) | Stagetext 2025 |
| DHH respondents who say subtitles must be nearly perfect / disagree poor subtitles beat none | 63% / 51% | Stagetext 2025 |
Context note: NIDCD’s adult self-report figure comes from a 2012 national survey (Blackwell et al.), which is the most recent available headline estimate on that page. Stagetext’s quality survey was small (94 people) and should be read as directional; Stagetext also cites 12 million deaf, deafened and hard-of-hearing people in the UK.
6. Comprehension and Accuracy: What Captions Actually Do
The research case for captions is broad, but it comes with a quality condition. More than 100 empirical studies document that captioning a video improves comprehension of, attention to and memory for the video (Gernsbacher, Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences 2015). Sound-off viewing, the dominant short-form mode, is a different case: in Szarkowska’s eye-tracking study, removing sound from subtitled video lowered comprehension from 81.30% to 77.70% and pushed self-rated effort from 3.07 to 4.84 and frustration from 2.01 to 3.63 on 7-point scales. Captions help, but text alone does not fully replace audio.
Accuracy is where auto-captions still struggle. A test of four speech recognition apps found word error rates of 19-34% on English dialogue and 25-66% on Dutch (Pragt et al., Frontiers in Digital Health 2022). And imperfect captions have a cost: in a 2025 dual-task study of 22 adults, captions improved speech recognition but caption users reported a larger rise in fatigue, attributed to reconciling delayed, inaccurate text with the audio (Esser, Picou and Hornsby, American Journal of Audiology 2025). The human-captioner alternative is covered in our live captioning statistics.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Empirical studies showing captions improve comprehension, attention, memory | More than 100 | Gernsbacher 2015 |
| Comprehension, subtitled video with sound vs without | 81.30% vs 77.70% (n = 161 analyzed) | Szarkowska et al., PLoS One 2024 |
| Self-rated effort / frustration, sound on vs off (1-7) | 3.07 vs 4.84 / 2.01 vs 3.63 | Szarkowska et al., PLoS One 2024 |
| Comprehension gap for Australian viewers, sound on vs off | 80.94% vs 75.28% | Szarkowska et al., PLoS One 2024 |
| Word error rate of ASR apps, English / Dutch dialogue | 19-34% / 25-66% | Pragt et al., Frontiers in Digital Health 2022 |
| Imperfect-caption fatigue study sample | 22 adults, speech set at about 70% correct without captions | Esser et al., American Journal of Audiology 2025 |
| Dental students rating captions very or extremely helpful / using them consistently | 62.4% / 42.5% (n = 226) | Sousa Melo et al., Journal of Dental Education 2026 |
| Caption-enabled viewing, lower-income vs high-income countries | 60.9% vs 18.8% (34 countries) | Roussel et al., JMIR mHealth and uHealth 2026 |
Context note: the cardiology education study found mobile use of 81.4% in low-income countries versus 36.5% in high-income countries, a 42.1-point caption-enabled gap (60.9 minus 18.8), which suggests captions matter most where viewing is mobile-first (Roussel et al., JMIR mHealth and uHealth 2026). An eye-tracking study of 180 British primary-school children found better readers looked at same-language subtitles more, and that by the third or fourth year of reading instruction most children read fast enough to follow them (Lopukhina et al., Psychological Science 2025). Pragt’s data are from 2022 and predate the newest speech models; most recent available peer-reviewed comparison.
7. Rules: What Must Be Captioned, and What Is Exempt
Regulation explains why captions on creator video are voluntary while captions on TV clips are not. Under FCC rules, consumer-generated media shown online is not required to be captioned unless it was shown on TV with captions, while clips of captioned TV programming must carry captions online, with deadlines that began on January 1, 2016 for straight-lift clips, January 1, 2017 for montages and July 1, 2017 for live and near-live clips (FCC, Captioning of Internet Video Programming). Live clips may be posted with a delay of up to 12 hours after broadcast and near-live clips up to 8 hours.
Public bodies face a separate clock. The DOJ rule under ADA Title II requires state and local governments to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA, which includes captions for videos, by April 26, 2027 for entities serving 50,000 people or more and April 26, 2028 for smaller ones; social media posts made before an entity’s compliance date are excepted (ADA.gov, Fact Sheet: New Rule on the Accessibility of Web Content). Those dates were pushed back one year by an interim final rule published April 20, 2026 (Federal Register, 2026-07663).
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Straight-lift TV clips online must be captioned from | January 1, 2016 | FCC consumer guide |
| Montage clips must be captioned from | January 1, 2017 | FCC consumer guide |
| Live / near-live clips: compliance date and allowed delay | July 1, 2017; up to 12 hours / 8 hours | FCC consumer guide |
| Consumer-generated online video | Exempt unless shown on TV with captions | FCC consumer guide |
| ADA Title II WCAG 2.1 AA deadline, entities of 50,000+ | April 26, 2027 (originally April 24, 2026) | ADA.gov; Federal Register 2026 |
| ADA Title II deadline, smaller entities and special districts | April 26, 2028 (originally April 26, 2027) | ADA.gov; Federal Register 2026 |
| European Accessibility Act transposition deadline (covers audiovisual media services) | June 2022 | European Commission |
Context note: the European Commission’s EAA page lists audiovisual media services, smartphones and e-commerce among the covered products and services. None of these regimes directly obliges individual creators to caption a TikTok or Reel, which is why platform auto-captions (section 3) carry most of the load.
Summary: Short-Form Video Captions by the Numbers
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Consumers preferring sound-off video in public | Up to 69% | Verizon Media and Publicis Media, cited in PLoS One 2024 |
| Sound-off frequency, social media vs film and TV (1-7) | 3.23 vs 1.57 | Szarkowska et al., PLoS One 2024 |
| View time lift from captioned video ads | +12% | Meta, Facebook for Business |
| Negative reaction to unexpected loud sound in feed ads | 80% | Meta, Facebook for Business |
| US adults under 30 preferring subtitles on | 63% | YouGov 2023 |
| All US adults preferring subtitles on | 38% | YouGov 2023 |
| UK subtitle users citing concentration | 42% | The Audience Agency for Stagetext 2023 |
| TikTok auto captions launch | April 6, 2021 | TikTok Newsroom |
| YouTube automatic caption languages | 67 | YouTube Help Center 2026 |
| YouTube auto dubbing source languages | 29 | YouTube Help Center 2026 |
| Instagram AI reel translation languages | 9 (January 2026) | Meta Newsroom 2025 |
| YouTube Shorts daily views | Over 200 billion | Alphabet Q2 2025 |
| Adults 18-29 using TikTok / Instagram | 63% / 80% | Pew Research Center 2025 |
| Teens on TikTok almost constantly | 16% | Pew Research Center 2024 |
| People needing rehabilitation for disabling hearing loss | 430 million | WHO 2026 |
| Projected people with some hearing loss by 2050 | Nearly 2.5 billion | WHO 2026 |
| Studies showing captions aid comprehension | More than 100 | Gernsbacher 2015 |
| Comprehension, sound on vs off (subtitled) | 81.30% vs 77.70% | Szarkowska et al., PLoS One 2024 |
| ASR app word error rate, English dialogue | 19-34% | Pragt et al., 2022 |
| Online TV clips captioning rule start | January 1, 2016 | FCC |
Methodology and Sources
Every figure above was read during research for this article in a platform announcement, help-center page, earnings release, government page, survey release or peer-reviewed abstract or full text. Platform feature facts (languages, dates) come from the platforms’ own pages; usage and preference data come from independent surveys.
- Szarkowska, Ragni, Szkriba, Black, Orrego-Carmona and Kruger: Watching subtitled videos with the sound off, PLoS One 2024 (also the source quoting the Verizon Media and Publicis Media study)
- Meta: Capture Attention with Updated Features for Video Ads (Facebook for Business); Instagram voice translations and fonts, Meta Newsroom, November 2025
- Pascual-Ferrá et al.: Message deployment during public health emergencies, JMIR 2024
- YouGov: Most American adults under 30 prefer watching TV with subtitles, August 2023
- Stagetext: 42% cite concentration (The Audience Agency, 2023); 85% of deaf people say quality matters (2025)
- TikTok Newsroom: Introducing auto captions, April 2021; Thanks a billion, September 2021
- YouTube Help Center: Use automatic captioning; Automatic dubbing
- Alphabet: Q2 2025 earnings remarks; Q3 2025 earnings remarks
- Pew Research Center: Social Media Fact Sheet (2025 survey); Teens, Social Media and Technology 2024; 1 in 5 Americans regularly get news on TikTok, September 2025
- World Health Organization: Deafness and hearing loss fact sheet, March 3, 2026
- NIDCD (NIH): Quick Statistics About Hearing
- Peer-reviewed research via Europe PMC: Gernsbacher 2015, Pragt et al. 2022, Esser et al. 2025, Lopukhina et al. 2025, Sousa Melo et al. 2026, Roussel et al. 2026
- US Federal Communications Commission: Captioning of Internet Video Programming
- US Department of Justice: ADA.gov fact sheet on the web accessibility rule; Federal Register interim final rule, April 20, 2026
- European Commission: European Accessibility Act
- Data watch: The Verizon Media and Publicis Media sound-off figure (up to 69% in public, 25% in private) is reported here as quoted in Szarkowska et al. (PLoS One 2024); the original study page could not be retrieved, so its fieldwork date and sample are not confirmed. Meta’s 12% caption lift is an undated internal-test figure that references 2015 data and has no published methodology. No platform (TikTok, Instagram, YouTube) publishes the share of short-form views watched with captions on, so there is no first-party 2026 usage rate; preference data come from YouGov (2023, US) and Stagetext (2021-2025, UK). Ofcom’s subtitle and media-use research pages returned security challenges and could not be read, and a Stagetext youth-subtitle survey often quoted elsewhere could not be found on Stagetext’s site, so both were excluded. The FCC page was read through a text mirror because the site returned 403. The YouTube language count (67) is our count of the help-center list. TikTok’s last official global user count is from 2021. Newer data expected: Pew’s 2026 teen survey, the next Alphabet earnings remarks on Shorts, and WHO’s next World report on hearing.
Last updated: October 3, 2026. We update this roundup quarterly, and the next refresh is expected when Pew Research Center publishes its next Teens, Social Media and Technology report and Alphabet releases its Q3 2026 earnings remarks.