In an effort to counter the prevalence of doomscrolling, the Singaporean government has introduced a new initiative that provides financial incentives for citizens to engage in daily reading. Launched this month, the program is designed to foster improved concentration, critical thinking, and imagination among the population, particularly in an era characterized by an overwhelming abundance of digital stimulation.
Under the new scheme, participants can earn rewards by logging their reading sessions on a dedicated government website. To receive a payment of S$1 (80c), readers must complete 50 daily sessions. Each session must last at least 15 minutes to qualify for 20 virtual coins, with a threshold of 1,000 coins required for the dollar payout. Users are permitted to log one reading session per day.
Melissa Tam, the chief of the national library board, emphasized the importance of building sustainable habits through manageable, incremental steps. She noted that while modern life offers constant access to headlines, videos, and summaries, the government aims to encourage a simple goal: dedicating 15 minutes to reading, whether during a commute, over lunch, or before sleep.
The government is also exploring additional measures to mitigate the negative impacts of social media on young people, including potential daily time limits, following a recent study that identified doomscrolling and digital addiction as primary concerns for youth. This move aligns with Singapore’s history of using financial incentives to influence public behavior, such as previous health initiatives offering supermarket vouchers for walking or prizes for meeting daily step counts. Notably, the program arrives despite Singaporean students' strong performance on the global stage, as 15-year-olds in the country recently secured the top spot for reading in the 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), outperforming peers in China and Taiwan.
Affluent city-state hopes plan will improve critical thinking and imagination ‘in a world of extraordinary abundance of stimulation’
The affluent city-state hopes its gamification strategy, which launched this month, will improve concentration, critical thinking and the imagination of Singaporeans.
