When We Forgot How to Read: Reflections on Young Adults, Greece, and the Quiet Power of Stories

By Stefanis Michailidi

Usually, I wake up about an hour before everyone else in my house. It’s the only time of day that truly belongs to me. I pack snacks for school, make my coffee, and settle in with my book. On the rare slow weekends when there is no practice, no races, no rush, I do the same, even though there are no snacks to prepare. I want that quiet hour with my book.

When my children eventually wander in, they join me on the couch. My eldest will pick up his book and read beside me. My youngest, not a morning type at all, will just curl up against me.

He'll read later, at dinner or before bed.

These are lovely images, aren’t they?

And yet, as I look around today, here in Greece, they feel more like nostalgia than reality.

I write stories for young readers and young adults, about love, courage, and growing up, because I believe stories can give shape to emotions that otherwise remain unnamed. But I often wonder: Are we still inviting young people into the world of stories? Or have we built a world so fast, so crowded, that the stillness of a book feels foreign to them?

The State of Reading in Greece

In recent years, surveys have traced a quiet, troubling trend. According to Eurostat, only about 43% of Greeks aged sixteen and above read at least one book in the past year — a percentage far below that of most European countries. Among adolescents, the numbers sink even lower.

A 2024 Kathimerini study found that just 40.7% of Greek teenagers (ages 11, 13, and 15) read books outside school. Among boys, the number fell to 31.8%. These are not small variations; they signal a cultural shift in which reading has drifted from joy into obligation. Even those who still read do so rarely: a national survey showed that while 44% of Greeks read at least one book in the past year, only 13% read more than eight. Reading is no longer a habit; it’s an exception.

Behind these numbers lies a tangle of access, time, and identity. Economic inequalities, limited library infrastructures, and uneven digital resources make it harder for families and schools to nurture reading as a daily practice. And even when books are available, they must compete with screens, exams, noise, and fatigue.

Recently, a fifteen-year-old told me: “When I finally have time, I don’t want to read. I want to rest.” I understood. Reading asks for energy, and so many young people today are already running on empty.

The Deeper Problem: Disconnection

I don’t believe teenagers simply “don’t care” about books. They care deeply about stories. Don't we all?

But often, they care about stories we, as adults, don’t necessarily enjoy. They reach for books we might find too dramatic, too chaotic, too strange, too fantastical, too “unserious.” They may fall in love with fanfiction, graphic novels, messy romances, dark tales, or stories told in screenshots and text threads. That doesn’t mean they care less about reading. It means they care about stories that speak to their world, not ours.

We have also underestimated how much representation matters. Many teens tell me that the books they are assigned feel distant: written in another time, another tone, another world. But when they encounter a story that mirrors their streets, their anxieties, their joy and pain, or simply a story told in the rhythm of their own lives, something opens. They talk about the characters as if they were friends. Some of them even begin to write.

The issue is not that stories have lost their power. It’s that we haven’t re-anchored them in the emotional world of this generation.

To read, one must first feel seen.

Reading as an Act of Courage

Reading has always been intimate, but now it feels like a small act of rebellion.

In an age where every second brings a new notification, choosing to stay with one story, one voice, requires focus, patience, and faith. To read is to slow down, and slowness has become radical.

When young people choose to read, they do something quietly heroic: they resist the urgency of everything else. They pause long enough to enter another life. They practice empathy, imagination, and stillness. This skills are increasingly rare, and therefore increasingly valuable.

Why This Matters

If reading continues to decline, what we lose is not only a cultural habit but a language, the inner language of reflection, nuance, and empathy.

Stories shape the way we imagine possibility. They offer young adults a rehearsal space for life itself: to navigate fear, love, failure, hope. Through characters, they practice living before life demands it. Without that space, everything becomes transactional. We learn to process information, but we forget how to process emotion.

Perhaps that is the real danger of a society that no longer reads: not ignorance, but emotional silence.

Reimagining Reading in Greece

Reversing this trend requires more than campaigns. It requires a shift in how we invite, design, and speak about reading. We can begin by making reading feel personal again. When schools and communities allow young people to choose what they read, whether it’s a Greek novel, a translated fantasy, or a comic, reading becomes theirs. Joy returns when pressure leaves.

We also need more spaces, physical and digital, where readers and stories meet naturally. Imagine cafés hosting “quiet reading hours,” buses with short stories printed on windows, online book clubs where authors join the discussion. These aren’t just promotional ideas; they are cultural gestures.

And access matters. Greece has taken steps with e-libraries and mobile networks, but many rural or economically strained areas still face gaps. Affordable, visible, community-based ways to encounter books, digital lending, swaps, author visits, could shift the whole ecosystem.

Most importantly, we must talk about reading differently. Not as duty. Not as discipline. But as discovery.

When we say, “You must read,” we close a door. When we say, “Come see what I found inside this book,” we open one.

What I Hope For

I don’t believe the love of reading ever disappears. It want to believe that it waits quietly for the right moment. Sometimes it takes only one sentence, one story, to awaken it.

To the young people who say, “I don’t read,” I would say: you probably already do. Every time you linger on a lyric, a poem, a line that feels like you, that is reading. Start there.

To the adults who worry, I would say: don’t preach. Show. Read near them. Read with them. Let books be part of ordinary life, not an event requiring ceremony. Because reading, at its core, is intimacy.

Intimacy between a story and a reader, between one heart and another.

A Personal Note

When I began writing, I didn’t imagine that my stories would become part of this larger conversation. But over the years, I’ve realized that being an author is not only about creating fictional worlds; it is also about caring for the real one.

If my words help even one young person rediscover the pleasure of turning a page and recognizing themselves there, then that is enough.

And when that happens, when a young reader looks up from any page of any book and feels quietly changed, the world slows down and becomes a little more awake. Even if only for a moment.

(Published on stefanismichailidi.com — December 2025)