What if improving children’s reading were as easy as turning on television subtitles? The campaign group Turn on the Subtitles claims that this simple act can double a child’s chance of becoming a good reader.

It’s a message that has been amplified by celebrity influencers, including Stephen Fry and Jack Black.

“They’ll learn to read without even realising it,” says Black, in a TikTok video with 5.3 million views.

The claims have been repeated across the education space by schools, exam boards, tutoring companies, literacy charities and professional bodies.

Surveys show that most children don’t do enough reading outside of school, so getting that all-important reading practice while watching television seems like a no-brainer.

We spent the past three years conducting research funded by the Nuffield Foundation to find out whether subtitles have the power that this campaign claims they do.

What does the research say?

Children can’t learn from subtitles if they don’t look at them, so our first study used eye-tracking technology to measure where primary school children look while watching subtitled videos.

Results showed that children mostly ignore subtitles until they are able to read reasonably fluently - at a minimum of one word per second. This oral reading rate is usually achieved by the end of Years 2-3, meaning that subtitles are unlikely to provide a useful learning tool before then.

We then wanted to find out whether the use of subtitles for these older children improves their reading fluency. We asked children in Years 2-3 to watch television intensively for six weeks (averaging 11 hours per week). One group of children had subtitles on all the time, while the other group watched without.

Results showed that all children improved - as would be expected during a school term - but there was no additional benefit for the group who watched with subtitles.

We can’t rule out that a much longer period of using subtitles would provide some benefit to these older children. However, any benefit is likely to be far smaller than the effect of going to school.

Why don’t subtitles work for children?

The Turn on the Subtitles campaign rightly claims that adults read subtitles automatically. Their mistake was to assume that the same would be true for children of all ages. It’s not.

To use subtitles, viewers need to divide attention between moving images, speech and text that stays on screen for a short period of time.

The integration of these multiple sources of information at pace is challenging. Viewers also need to move their eyes precisely between the action on the screen and the subtitles, and read words quickly before they disappear. These are all cognitive capacities that need to be learned over time.

The emerging story is that becoming a fluent reader allows children to engage with subtitles, not that subtitles turn children into fluent readers.

Is there any role for subtitles at all?

It’s important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Subtitles are clearly useful for many deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers, and they can also help speakers of other languages to make sense of what they’re watching.

Surveys show that many young people prefer to use subtitles because they improve concentration and permit multi-tasking. However, these uses all require viewers to be fluent readers already.

Research shows that it’s easier for children to learn new oral vocabulary when they also see its written form. So subtitles could help children who are already fluent readers to pick up on new words. However, television language is far less sophisticated than the language used in children’s books, so it’s generally not a route to vocabulary building.

The message for teachers is that subtitles may be useful for children who can already read. Put them on if they help a child to access content, follow what is being said or enjoy a programme more. Just don’t think of subtitles as a means of improving literacy.

The problem with edu-myths

The Turn on the Subtitles campaign went viral in an instant. It was catchy, inspiring and backed by celebrities - the kind of story that’s hard to resist.

The campaign also appeals to our intuition: as literate adults, we feel how strongly subtitles capture our attention, and assume that children experience them in the same way. Bring in commercial interest and the desire for a simple solution, and the edu-myth is born.

The problem is not that subtitles are harmful for children. The problem with edu-myths is that they distract attention from approaches proven to work.

Learning to read is a painstaking process for most children, and there are no shortcuts - there is no magic button for turning on literacy.

Children don’t “learn to read without even realising it”. They learn to read because teachers translate evidence into high-quality instruction, scaffolded reading practice, guided discussion of carefully-selected texts and so much more.

If celebrity influence can rack up 5 million views for a myth, imagine what it could do for these practices that really build readers.

Kathleen Rastle is a professor of cognitive psychology and Anastasiia Lopukhina is a postdoctoral research fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London.