[iCONADA Research Team]The Dopamine Game Under Digital Anxiety: Singapore’s “Paid-to-Read” National Social Experiment

In an age when short-form videos are sweeping across the globe like a tidal wave and algorithms are becoming increasingly sophisticated at capturing our attention, human attention itself has become a scarce resource fiercely contested by technology giants. Confronted with this collective crisis of attention, fueled by the phenomenon of “doomscrolling,” Singapore’s National Library Board (NLB) launched a bombshell initiative in September 2026: a five-year nationwide reading movement called “ReadSG.” In an unprecedented move, the program gamifies reading, allowing citizens to earn virtual coins by checking in with their daily reading and redeem those coins for cash.

This “pay people to read” policy immediately triggered polarized and intense debate both internationally and within Singaporean society. It is more than a cultural promotion campaign. At its core, it represents a bold social and behavioral experiment, reflecting both collective anxiety over the erosion of attention in the digital age and the growing inventiveness of public policy in responding to it.

The Dopamine Game Under Digital Anxiety: Singapore’s “Paid-to-Read” National Social Experiment

Government officials and innovation-oriented scholars who support the policy argue that conventional, awareness-based approaches to cultural promotion have become ineffective in the face of modern technology. The addictive appeal of social media, they contend, lies largely in the immediate dopamine feedback delivered by algorithms. If society wants to pull people’s attention away from glowing little screens and back toward books, governments may therefore have to fight fire with fire.

Through the ReadSG mechanism, citizens can earn tokens by reading for just 15 minutes a day, thereby lowering the initial psychological barrier to habit formation. For people without established reading habits, 15 minutes represents a very low threshold for getting started, while small cash rewards provide the most immediate form of positive reinforcement.

The policy thus attempts to use one of the most familiar symbols of a capitalist society—money—to give the ancient practice of reading a new positive incentive. Even more ambitiously, the program reportedly incorporates a collective dimension in which accumulated reading hours can unlock charitable donations. In this way, an essentially self-oriented activity—reading for oneself—is transformed into a source of altruistic pride and collective honor, as though the government were attempting to carve out an oasis of reading in the middle of a digital desert.

The Psychological Concern of Critics: How Material Incentives May Undermine Intrinsic Motivation

Critics, however, including scholars and clinical psychologists, have raised serious questions about the policy’s long-term effects from the perspectives of behavioral economics and psychology. At the heart of the debate lies a well-known concept in behavioral psychology: the Overjustification Effect.

Reading is ordinarily an activity driven by intrinsic motivations such as curiosity, intellectual discovery, and the pursuit of personal meaning. Once it becomes associated with an external material reward—“check in every day and get paid”—the psychological structure surrounding the activity may change.

People may gradually begin to think, “I read because I get paid,” rather than “I read because I want to learn.”

Critics warn that such a reversal of incentives could easily encourage superficial forms of participation or even “fake check-ins.” People might simply leave an audiobook or e-book running while doing something else, or attempt to manipulate the system through automated scripts in order to inflate their reading data.

More seriously, once the pilot period ends and government funding is withdrawn, people who have become accustomed to external rewards may experience a sharp decline in their willingness to read. Instead of cultivating a lasting reading habit, the program could inadvertently undermine the very intrinsic interest in reading that it was originally intended to nurture.

Conclusion: A Cultural Test of Spiritual Sovereignty

Singapore’s “paid-to-read” experiment is ultimately testing the limits of public governance in responding to the digital age. A reward of one Singapore dollar—approximately NT$25—after 50 consecutive days of checking in is far too small to become a meaningful path to wealth. Its symbolic significance is therefore likely to be much greater than its direct economic value.

Will this experiment become the technological cure its supporters hope for, successfully helping citizens develop small but lasting reading habits in the face of the digital tide? Or will it become, as its critics fear, a cautionary example of how monetary incentives can undermine the intrinsic and spiritual value of reading?

The outcome of this contest between dopamine-driven incentives and intrinsic motivation may offer forward-looking and profound cultural lessons for societies around the world confronting their own crisis of attention.