When was the last time you read a chapter without your thumb drifting towards a notification?

Not skimmed, not scrolled. Read until the words settled in your mind.

Bangladesh is, statistically, more literate than ever. The national literacy rate now stands at around 77–78 per cent, with even higher rates among young people aged 15–24. Classrooms are fuller. Universities are expanding. Smartphones glow in almost every hand.

And yet, something about the way we read feels thinner.

Reading has not disappeared. It has changed shape.

For many students, e-books are stitched into the rhythm of daily life.

Amrin, 21, a fourth-year university student, showed her support for e-books. Her days are packed with lectures, assignments, and part-time tutoring. “I read during class breaks,” she says. “Ten minutes before the next lecture, I open my phone and continue where I left off.”

On days when traffic refuses to move, she reads. “Traffic used to feel wasted,” she smiles. “Now it’s a chapter or two.”

Shihab, 24, who travels long hours from Dhaka to Jhenaidah, calls his commute “my library time.”

“If books were only physical, I’d barely read,” he admits. “My phone fits into the chaos of my day.”

For them, digital reading feels practical. It slips between responsibilities. It survives in fragments.

But for others, reading is not just about finishing a story. It is about holding on.

Ayan, 24, keeps a small wooden shelf in his bedroom. The books are old, their edges slightly yellowed. “My nana used to read to me every evening,” he says. “He would sit by the window, glasses low on his nose, and read aloud.”

After he passed away, Ayan could not bring herself to throw the books away. “When I open them, I still hear his voice,” he says. “The smell, the paper, the way the pages feel; it takes me back. A screen can’t do that.”

He has tried reading on his phone late at night. “But the light feels harsh. The notifications sit there, waiting. Even if I ignore them, I know they’re there.”

Nabila, 25, says she reads differently depending on the format. “On my Kindle, I read fast,” she says. “On paper, I underline sentences. I pause. I let them sink in.”

The difference, she explains, is not technical. It is emotional. “With a physical book, I feel like I am inside the story.”

Teachers notice the shift too.

Screens have opened doors. They have democratised knowledge. They have allowed students in small towns to access global literature instantly. They have turned traffic jams into reading sessions and waiting rooms into quiet pages.

But physical books hold something screens struggle to replicate: memory, ritual, intimacy.

A book can carry fingerprints, pressed flowers, and handwritten notes in the margins. It can sit on a shelf for years and still feel like a companion. It can connect a grandson to his late grandfather through something as simple as turning a page.

Perhaps the real concern is not format. It is depth.

Are we reading deeply enough to be changed by what we read? Are we allowing stories to stretch our patience, to challenge our thinking, to sit with discomfort?

The generation that reads today will shape tomorrow’s classrooms, policies, and conversations. If reading becomes another hurried task, squeezed between notifications, what happens to reflection? To empathy? To critical thought?

Maybe there is no need to choose sides.

Maybe the student reading a novel on her phone in traffic and the young man holding his grandfather’s old paperback are both protecting something valuable.

The page may glow, or be worn and soft, but what matters is whether we still return to it and whether we stay long enough to listen.