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Singapore is paying its citizens to pick up a book for at least 15 minutes a day in an effort to fight the rise of doomscrolling.<\/p>\n
The affluent city-state hopes its gamification strategy, which launched this month, will improve concentration, critical thinking and the imagination of Singaporeans.<\/p>\n
Under the scheme, readers accrue points that can be redeemed for a few cents. People will have to log 50 daily reading sessions on a government website to earn S$1 (80c). A session of 15 minutes or more is rewarded with 20 virtual coins, with 1,000 coins needed for a dollar payment. One reading session is allowed daily.<\/p>\n The national library board\u2019s chief, Melissa Tam, said sustainable reading habits were built through small and achievable steps.<\/p>\n \u201cWe live in a world of extraordinary abundance, of content, information and stimulation,\u201d she told the Straits Times<\/a>. \u201cAt any moment, we can scroll through hundreds of headlines, watch a video or get a summary of almost anything.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know that habits are built through small, consistent actions. So, we are starting with a simple goal: just read for 15 minutes a day. On the bus, before bed or over lunch.\u201d<\/p>\n The government is considering ways to make social media less harmful for young Singaporeans, including a daily time limit. Doomscrolling and addiction caused most harm to young people, a recent study<\/a> found.<\/p>\n It is not uncommon for the Singapore government to use financial incentives to try to influence the behaviour of its citizens. Previous health-focused initiatives have included supermarket vouchers<\/a> for walking and prizes<\/a> for hitting daily step targets.<\/p>\n Despite government concerns about reading, Singapore\u2019s 15-year-old students recently topped the world rankings for reading in the 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), beating China and Taiwan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Singapore is paying its citizens to pick up a book for at least 15 minutes a day in an effort to fight the rise of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":85350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/85350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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