Singapore has launched a new initiative that pays citizens to read for at least 15 minutes a day, turning the increasingly private act of picking up a book into a small public incentive. Under the scheme, readers log their sessions on a government website and earn 20 virtual coins for each qualifying session, with 1,000 coins redeemable for S$1. Participants can record one reading session per day. The initiative is part of Singapore’s wider effort to encourage sustained reading habits at a time when social media and endless streams of digital content compete for attention.

The National Library Board’s chief, Melissa Tam, said the programme is designed around the idea that lasting habits are built through manageable, repeated actions. “At any moment, we can scroll through hundreds of headlines, watch a video or get a summary of almost anything,” she told the Straits Times. The 15-minute target, she said, offers a simple alternative that can fit into everyday routines—on public transport, during lunch or before bed. The initiative arrives alongside government consideration of measures to reduce the potential harms of social media among young people, including a possible daily time limit.

Singapore’s attempt to lure people away from their screens with the promise of a few cents is also an intriguing contradiction: a highly digitised society using technology and gamification to encourage an older form of attention. The country already uses financial incentives to encourage behaviours such as walking and meeting daily step targets. Yet its young readers are hardly starting from a literary deficit: Singaporean 15-year-olds ranked first globally for reading in the 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The new programme, then, is less a rescue mission for reading than an experiment in protecting the quiet, sustained concentration that books demand in an age built for the scroll.

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