An idyllic summer day is often imagined as a sunny day at the beach or in a hammock, a book in hand, a relaxed expression on one's face. Indeed, various neuroscientific studies show that reading lowers both heart rate and blood pressure and works as an excellent stress reliever.

Yet this image of an idyllic summer day — a person with a book — is itself already something closer to a fairy tale. In reality, we see hordes of people with their noses buried in their phones. And irritated parents who think mandatory summer reading is a pointless injustice.

Because adults themselves sit on their phones. It is possible that people are reading some gripping book there, but I dare to doubt it. All kinds of studies — including our own reading survey completed this spring — confirm the decline of reading habits.

So what, many will say! Let people live as they wish.

There is some truth in that. Yet we should also recognize the consequences and dangers hidden in a society now growing up where complex, multilayered literature is no longer read. Where reading is associated primarily with entertainment. I myself love a good crime novel, especially in summer. It pulls you in so you can disappear into the book for a while and forget the valley of troubles around us.

Still, alongside crime novels, reading more demanding literature should remain. This is not simply a matter of appreciating the fine arts — it is a matter of the future of society and culture.

More and more people can no longer cope with complex texts. Our attention and brains have already adapted to fast‑moving stories, simple lines of thought, simple sentences and simple plots.

TV series constantly use flashbacks because it is assumed that people quickly forget what happened even in the previous episode. TikTok and other social media have trained us to fragment our attention, and the brain must forget much of what it sees simply for self‑protection, because no one can deeply store the enormous flood of information that hits us daily from different channels — nor is there any point. Its purpose is largely just to entertain.

But endless entertainment leads to an ever more simplified culture. And an ever more simplified culture eventually collapses into primitiveness, incompetence and infantilism. And inevitably produces a society that can no longer cope with itself.

What does a literary text requiring deep focus train? Attention, memory, the ability to concentrate. It teaches patience and immersion. It trains us to experience a very wide spectrum of emotions. And it builds empathy and the ability to manage our own emotional lives.

One test involving readers of fiction and readers of nonfiction showed that fiction readers were clearly more successful in everything related to empathy, mental exercises and — perhaps most importantly — the ability to read emotions from other people's faces. To understand another person.

What happens in a society where serious literature is abandoned? Some researchers say that time has already arrived.

Attention is fragmented. Memory is short; often people do not remember even last week's events. Truth can be distorted. History is forgotten. Discussions turn into slogan‑shouting instead of substantive exchange. People become strangers to one another.

Young people who grow up without memory, without the ability to concentrate, without imagination, and without the ability to cope with their own or others' emotions are extremely vulnerable and easily manipulated.

Authoritarian regimes have always known that reading literature is dangerous. Burning books or destroying and banning them in other ways has been almost standard practice in every totalitarian state. Willingly or unwillingly, a non‑reading person moves themselves into a situation similar to a totalitarian society, where the ability to understand society, participate in it, form opinions and see through manipulation declines.

All the abilities listed above are deeply connected to language, abstract thinking and empathy — abilities that high‑quality literature helps develop.

So parents who think mandatory summer reading is torture for children should themselves pick up a somewhat more demanding text and, together with their child, stimulate those areas of the brain that deal with emotional life, self‑reflection and making sense of life.

Because it has been rightly said: the future is determined to a significant extent by what we continue to read.

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