Why and how you should caption your video content

For decades, Americans mostly rejected movies with subtitles or captions. But today, they overwhelmingly embrace captioned videos, especially on TikTok. For reasons including content density and accessibility, as well as consumer multitasking and multiculturalism, the preferred way of consuming a video is to read it.

According to a recent Los Angeles Times story, the trend has peaked on TikTok, which added an auto-captioning feature in April, and allows content creators to add captions in vivid colors and fonts. TikTok’s video capabilities make the platform particularly well-suited for captioning: short, densely packed with content, often featuring music drowning out dialogue, showcasing lyrics and physical challenges that viewers attempt to copy, and distributed to consumers all over the world, speaking a variety of different languages.