When was the last time you read a book? And I mean really read one, without scrolling through your phone, sharing the latest viral meme on Twitter X, or watching that Netflix show everyone is talking about. Chances are, it’s been a while, but you’re not alone. According to a YouGov survey, only 54% of adult Americans read a book in 2023. And the numbers are worse for children. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, only 43% of fourth graders scored at or above a proficient level of reading. Yikes!
So what’s the solution? Henry Warren, a specialist in education technology and a concerned father of three, wants children to … watch more TV? Well, sort of; he specifically wants children to watch any program or play video games with subtitles turned on. Together with entrepreneur Oli Barrett, he founded Turn on The Subtitles, a global initiative that aims to educate parents about the benefits of subtitles for improving children’s literacy.
In an extended conversation, Digital Trends talked with Warren about the challenge of getting kids to read, why subtitles are an ideal way to bridge the gap between the printed page and purely visual mediums, and why stars like Jack Black are using their celebrity to showcase just how effective Turn on the Subtitles can be.
Editor’s note: This interview has been condensed for length and clarity.
Digital Trends: How did the Turn on the Subtitles initiative come to be?
Henry Warren: Well, I’m a single dad with three kids. I have a 14-year-old son, a 12-year-old daughter, and another seven-year-old daughter. Like a lot of parents, they are pretty much addicted to their mobile phones, and trying to get them to pick up a book is really, really hard. Anyway, a friend sent me this Guardian article that cited some new research that showed that you could improve a child’s literacy if they watched TV with the subtitles on. One of the guys that was mentioned in it was a professor from Hawaii. I was reading it late at night here in the U.K., and I thought, well, it’s late here, but it’s a decent time in Hawaii. I’ll give him a call.
So, I just rang this dude, and ended up speaking to him for about an hour. And by the end of this call, … I was like, holy cow. If this is right, this could be absolutely huge. He sent over about 450 academic papers from around the world, and it turns out that academics have known about the benefits of subtitles to boost literacy for about 10 to 15 years, but it’s just never really got into the public consciousness. So cutting a very long story short, we thought what we would do to get started was to just tell a few friends. And from there, it snowballed. It caught on like crazy.
Stephen Fry, who’s a bit of a household legend here in the U.K., got wind of it, and then before we knew it, we had 37 million impressions on Twitter alone. And then gradually, TV companies started to get hold of this research and governments began to write the practice into law. For example, it’s now a law in India to have subtitles on some of its programming. By 2025, 50% of all linear broadcast content, what you think of as TV, will have subtitles.
It’s not just India, though. Here in the U.K., Sky, which is part of Comcast, created the Sky Q Literacy Zone with our help. So you can now watch SpongeBob SquarePants and Scooby Doo with subtitles available.
Turn on the Subtitles just launched a channel on YouTube with the wonderful people at Moonbug, which has accumulated over 5 billion views. It’s amazing how far we’ve come with this initiative. We started off just trying to get a few friends involved to help our kids read more, and it’s now helping around about 400 million children around the world.
In doing research for this interview, I discovered, and it wasn’t much of a surprise, that the main cause for the decline in literacy among children is a lack of access to reading material due to their economic situation. How does Turn on the Subtitles seek to overcome that hurdle?
Well, the sad fact is that you’re absolutely right. There is a direct correlation between poverty and low levels of literacy. Did you know that six out of 10 kids in the poor parts of the United States have no books at all, not a single book. And pretty much all of them have access to some form of screen or television. There’s almost not a single child in the U.S. who doesn’t watch some form of TV.
The average child in the U.K. watches about three hours and 16 minutes of TV every day. In the United States, it’s actually a little bit higher than that. But if they were to have the subtitles turned on when they are watching all that TV, they would read the same number of words that are in all of the Harry Potter books, the Narnia books, the Lord of the Rings books, and everything that Roald Dahl ever wrote combined. That’s amazing! It’s truly nuts.
Another factor contributing to child illiteracy is the dominance of technology in everyday life. We’re all attached to our phones. And if we’re not on our phones, we’re watching TV or playing video games. With Turn on the Subtitles, it solves that problem by using subtitles to bring in reading to what is normally a purely visual experience.
You’re exactly right. U.S. students’ reading scores are currently at the lowest level that they’ve been for 34 years. Wow. Now, there are a bunch of reasons for that. The two main ones, the ones you’ve already touched on, are poverty and technology. Watching a video provides that dopamine hit much quicker, much easier. And so they gravitate towards that.
What comes after the initial connection your initiative hopes to establish between a child and subtitles? Once they’ve learned how to do that, what’s next?
Well, our initial target was helping 1,000 children. We went past that in about two or three days. We then set a target of reaching a million children, and we blew past that pretty quickly, too. And so are current goal now is to help a billion children by 2027.
But if you were to ask at what point do we say, yes, our job here is done, it’s at that point when it is just the received wisdom that children’s TV should always have subtitles on and the vast majority of broadcasters provide high-quality subtitles by default in their programming.
There are plenty of streamers like Netflix that not only already have subtitles, but they offer customizable options for them as well. For instance, I looked on Hulu and discovered you can change the font size and color to make it more visually appealing to little children. But I didn’t know that until I had to research this interview. How do you get parents to discover these tools? And in what ways can these streamers improve these options for children?
There’s a lot to unpack there. First, up until fairly recently, there’s been remarkably little research done on what are the optimal settings in terms of that balance between accessibility and legibility that improve overall literacy. We’ve held tests on six continents, and we’ve created the first generation of what we’re referring to as literacy-grade captions or Caterpillar captions. And yes, you will be seeing these on many more kid’s TV programs around the world fairly soon.
Ultimately, what we’re asking parents to do is just to spare 10 seconds to go on to Netflix or Disney+ and turn on these settings for your children. It could be the most impactful 10 seconds you can spare for your child.
It helps to have prominent people talk about this. Earlier in our conversation, you brought up Stephen Fry, but I do want to mention the Kung Fu Panda in the room, Jack Black. Earlier this year, he made a very public endorsement for Turn on the Subtitles, which got attention in the mainstream media. How did he become involved in the project?
Well, people usually assume we are incredibly well-connected and extremely professional. [Laughs] But the fact is that we just don’t give up. We’re just a bunch of concerned parents, right? And we just rang them, and then we rang them again, until the right people said yes, and they did. It was as simple as that.
According to one YouGov study I recently read, adults younger than 30 are more likely to use subtitles than ever before. Do you think that the generation of adults under 30 will pass on this viewing behavior to their kids? And how can Turn on the Subtitles help with that?
It’s a great question. On the whole, most children, certainly prior to our campaign, did not have the subtitles on. But the numbers start to go up around ages 14 to 15 until you get into the late 30s. And then they plummet until people start to have hearing loss issues.
So why are teenagers and folks in their 20s and 30s using subtitles? I think there are three reasons why. First, sound mixing has become incredibly sophisticated, to the point where some dialogue is almost unintelligible. Just look at, or rather listen to, The Dark Knight Rises; I still can’t figure out what the hell Bane is saying!
What we’re mostly interested in is ultimately getting the broadcasters to change the default settings. Why? Because 98% of kids don’t change the default setting. Defaults really, really matter. So that’s what we’ve got to change.
The second reason is portability. When you’re on a train, a subway, or a place where you don’t want other people to hear what you’re watching and you don’t have your headphones, you can still engage with the content if you have the subtitles on.
And then the third reason is due to the rise of second screening. The vast majority of content is now consumed with multiple other screens. We scroll on our phones while also binge-watching the latest popular Netflix show.
What do you want people to do with this initiative? What are your hopes and expectations for the next stage of Turn on the Subtitles?
We are utilizing the moment that Jack Black viral post has caused to work with some fabulous companies and charities in the U.S. One’s called Kids Read Now and the other is called Tapybl. They are helping us push the importance of subtitles in improving children’s literacy out to schools.
We’re also asking schools to tell their parents about this initiative so that the parents can be empowered to turn on the subtitles at home. Ultimately, our main goal is for everyone – celebrities, parents, teachers, and children—to do one simple thing: turn on your subtitles! You won’t regret it.
To find out more about Turn on the Subtitles, please visit the initiative’s official website.