Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

Two reasons from my perspective, other than my ears are getting older:

1. The sound mix has a huge dynamic range now, and lots of action scenes are mixed in with quiet conversation. Set the volume down, and you miss the dialogue. Set the volume up, and you wake up the neighbors.

2. Dialects and accents seem to be more prevalent in content, and CC helps to cut down the cognitive load of “translation” while being entertained. Frankly, I enjoy the diversity of content, but I don’t want to have to work hard to watch TV.

Also probably because reading something is much faster than listening it. It takes just a second to visually read a sentence that is on the screen, instead of waiting for 2-3 seconds for the actor to actually say it out loud. Probably because we humans recognize words and word groups instead of letters (as how that Oxford study a few years back found out), and that's much faster.

> Captions can also facilitate multitasking

I have a hard time believing this. Captions demand more attention if anything. I can passively "watch" a video by only listening to the audio, but I can't passively read.

I think that the phenomenon described in the article may actually be a symptom of a much deeper social change. Listening and auditory comprehension were critical skills for communication and preservation of knowledge in prehistory. Spoken word is inherently ephemeral. As civilizations developed or adopted writing systems, and the population became increasingly literate, text supplanted spoken communication and oral history in many areas. There are many obvious benefits to that change, but I believe that we also inadvertently sacrificed our listening and auditory comprehension skills in the process over many generations.

Text messaging/SMS is increasingly preferred to phone calls, with many of the younger generations experiencing high levels of anxiety if they're required to call someone.

This is completely anecdotal, but I've also observed several others who are unable to follow verbal navigation instructions - either spoken from another person or even live step by step instructions from a navigation app. They only feel confident if there's a visual representation.

I think we've mistakenly classified that behavior as having a "visual learning style", when it is more accurately the result of our species losing its ability to process auditory language.

This is an interesting take actually.. If we can assume that younger generations spend more time communicating electronically via some form of text messaging, at least the majority so, are you saying that that just becomes the "default" form of communication naturally?

Where are older generations would have spend far more time communicating verbally..

That makes some sense to me anyway. Would be super interesting to see some further studies done. And to philosophise the results that could mean.