By Staff Reporter
TOTS or Turn On The Subtitles – in South Africa – was launched recently, to drive awareness around a simple action that can scientifically improve children’s literacy levels.
Turnonthesubtitles.org is working with local entertainment and sports stars to champion an ambitious plan to create the world’s largest literacy programme. The strategy is simple yet powerful: it encourages families to activate subtitles on their streaming platforms to help improve their children’s reading skills.

By posting Instagram messages to their social channels Connie Ferguson, Bryan Habana, Proverb, Graeme Smith, Thobile Khumalo, and Ntando Kunene have joined international supporters of TOTS – Jack Black and Stephen Fry – to highlight the illiteracy pandemic and encourage everyone to turn on the subtitles on their streaming platforms.
Su Little, Campaign Lead at Turn on the Subtitles says, ‘The statistics are alarming. Out of a global children’s literacy study across 57 countries, South Africa ranked the lowest, where 8 out of 10 children in our country currently can’t read for meaning in any language by age 10. Unfortunately, 7 out of 10 parents or caregivers don’t or can’t help their children practice reading either.
Ferguson explains in her Instagram post: “Nearly half of our primary schools have no books, and worst of all, problems surrounding illiteracy are costing our economy a staggering R119 billion each year.”
Habana adds, “There’s a simple, 10-second action that can change this. An action that gives parents the time to get things done, guilt-free, while helping their children practice reading. And it costs nothing.”
“Imagine this: watching just three to seven hours of subtitled TV a week could expose your child to a million words in a year. By doubling their chance of becoming a good reader, maybe we can also double the chance of increasing the matric pass rate,” says Proverb.
<Explainer video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Research shows that turning on subtitles while children watch TV can significantly improve their reading skills, doubling the likelihood of them becoming proficient readers. Platforms like Netflix and YouTube, along with many others, offer subtitles for a wide range of children’s shows, providing an easy, accessible tool to improve literacy.
By simply activating this feature, parents can incorporate a proven, impactful method into their child’s daily entertainment, transforming screen time into an opportunity for learning and development.