Three in four young Cypriots read no books

It’s no secret that Cypriots don’t read much. A Eurostat poll from two years ago ranked us second-last in the EU, behind only Romania. That poll made waves, and was much talked about. Digging deeper, though, reveals an aspect of the research that wasn’t so highlighted, and is actually even more shocking. Respondents aged 16 and over were asked how many books they’d read in the past year (for pleasure, i. e. not schoolbooks or manuals for work). Overall in the EU, 47. 2 per cent of people said they’d read no books at all in the past year. For Cyprus, that figure was a hefty 67. 3 per cent – slightly worse (or better) than Romania at 70. 6 per cent, though also behind Turkey (69. 7) and Albania (70. 8), non-EU countries that were also included in the study. The encouraging trend shown by the poll was that younger people are reading more than older ones, with that 47.

2 per cent of EU non-readers decreasing to 38 per cent in the 16-24 age group. In Cyprus, however, the trend is reversed – dramatically so. If you take the figures only for the 16-24s , not only are we the least book-loving nation in Europe – the poll also included e-books and audio books, both fiction and non-fiction – it’s not even close. Almost three quarters of our youngsters (74. 9 per cent) hadn’t read a single book in the previous year. The second-place country is Italy, at 53. 5 per cent. Romania is actually about average, at 37. 3 per cent, so they’re obviously being dragged down by the older generations. Young Cypriots stand out in European figures For boys, our figure is 82. 9 per cent, nearly 20 points higher than second-place Malta at 63. 2 per cent. Girls are at 66. 3 per cent, which is more than double the EU average of 28. 3 per cent! A couple of caveats. The EU averages are from 2020, so not directly from…