For centuries, literacy has been an unstoppable global achievement, rising from 12% of the adult population in 1820 to 82% in 2000. However, the advent of the smartphone in the mid-2000s reversed course, fragmenting our attention. Today in Italy the crisis is evident: according to Eurostat, only 35% of citizens between 16 and 65 years old read at least one book a year – compared to a European average of 52% – and an equally worrying 35% suffer from functional illiteracy, not understanding what they read. Abandoning prolonged reading not only compromises democracy, but also deprives us of an extraordinary health shield: just think that reading more than 3 and a half hours a week can extend your life by as much as 23 months.
Why we don’t read anymore: the role of smartphones
For millennia, reading has been a privilege for the few. Before Gutenberg’s invention of movable type printing in 1440, a single book cost as much as months of work and required a copyist for weeks. In Europe, about 30% of the population could read, almost all upper-class men.
The press changed everything. Books became accessible, and for five centuries the literacy curve rose almost without interruption: in 1820 12% of adults in the world could read, in 2000 82%. Access to the written word has transformed politics, science, democracy, law, medicine — a silent but radical revolution. At a certain point, however, the curve stopped rising. Not in basic literacy, but in the habit of reading: in the pleasure of reading and in the time we dedicate to doing it.
Researchers identify the mid-2000s as the turning point: the same period in which the smartphone became mass-market and social networks entered everyone’s pockets. Human attention becomes the most contested resource on the planet.
It’s not that people stopped reading all of a sudden. It’s that the available time has been filled with something else — something faster, more immediate, more designed to keep us hooked. A book on a table is still. A smartphone pulsates, vibrates, lights up. The book simply can’t compete.
How many Italians read: Italy’s numbers compared to Europe
Italy presents a particularly critical picture. According to Eurostat, only 35% of Italians between 16 and 65 have read at least one book in the last year. The European average is 52%, Denmark reaches 72%. Italy is third to last in Europe, ahead only of Cyprus and Romania.
Furthermore, the trend is worsening. Weekly reading time has shrunk by nearly an hour in just two years — from three and a half hours to less than three. Whoever reads, reads less. And those who read little, read less and less.
Added to this is a huge internal geographical gap. In the South there are 30% fewer bookshops than the national average and less than 20% of the books sold in Italy end up in the South and on the Islands. It’s not just a matter of individual choice: in many areas there is no physical place to buy or borrow a book.
Functional illiteracy in Italy: one in three adults does not understand what they read
The most alarming fact does not concern those who read little, but those who read and do not understand what they read. According to the results of the OECD survey published in December 2024, 35% of Italian adults between 16 and 65 are unable to understand texts that go beyond explicit and simple information: a contract, a bank information, a newspaper article of medium complexity. The OECD average is 26%. In 2012 Italy was at 28% — in ten years the figure has worsened by seven points.
This phenomenon is called functional illiteracy: knowing how to decipher words, but not understanding the meaning of a text. And it’s not an individual problem. Anyone who does not understand a regulatory text loses rights. Those who fail to evaluate political arguments are more exposed to manipulation. It is, for all intents and purposes, a democratic problem.
Reading on paper and reading on screen: why it is not the same thing
Some research states that those who read the same text on paper understand and remember more than those who read it on screen. The effect is stronger for long texts and even more marked in less experienced readers.
The reason is not physical. It’s that the brain brings with it the expectations of the digital environment: when we open a screen, the brain goes into scrolling mode — search for keywords, skip, anticipate the interruption. He carries those habits even when he tries to read something long and complex, and comprehension suffers.
What about e-readers? For devices designed exclusively for reading — no notifications, no apps, no interruptions — the negative effect is very small. The problem is not digital technology itself, but the fragmented environment in which we read: a text opened on the phone, between a message and a notification, is already compromised from the start.
A surprising piece of data comes from the Yale School of Public Health, which followed 3,635 people over the age of fifty for twelve years. The result: those who read books for more than three and a half hours a week — less than half an hour a day — lived an average of 23 months longer than those who didn’t read. A 20% mortality risk reduction, controlling for income, education, health and age.
The benefit was significantly greater for those who read books than for those who only read newspapers or magazines. It’s not reading in general that makes the difference: it’s the length, complexity and sustained concentration required by books.
