More than half of Lithuanians do not read books

8 percent of respondents said they spent 3-5 hours per week on reading, 5 percent – 5-7 hours, 3 percent – 7-9 hours, and 7 percent –9 and more hours per week.

The results show that most often men with unfinished secondary education, those with low income and rural residents don’t read at all. Active readers include women under 29 with higher education, those with higher income and people living in the capital.

According to the results, on average people spend 17 minutes per day on reading, while 58 minutes are spent on watching TV, 25 minutes on the internet and 6 minutes on computers games.

1,003 people took part in the survey in April.

People with kids aged 3-10 – 151 in total – were also asked how much time their kids spend on reading and how much time they spend on reading to their children if their kids cannot read yet. The survey found that 35 percent of children do not spend time on reading or listening to reading at all.

31 percent of kids spend up to 3 hours per week, 13 percent – 3-5 hours, 7 percent – 5-7 hours, 5 percent – 7-9 hours, and 6 percent – at least 9 hours per week.

Presenting the findings at a press conference on Thursday, Alma Littera director Danguole Viliuniene said that parents should take care of children's reading if they wanted to ensure a successful future for their kids.

"Parents should take care of it not by hiring tutors for an 11-grader, 12-grader or engaging their 8-grader, 7-grader, 5-grader in multiple extracurricular activities, (…) but just getting kids used to books, texts from an early age. It doesn’t matter what kind of book it will be in the future, not necessarily a printed one. Let it be an e-book, let it be installed on some other devices, but it's important that a child read and liked the text, understood the text, related himself/herself to characters, developed his/her imagination, creativity, wanted to learnt something, found friends who also like reading and could communicate with them," she said.