E ‘immediately boom for 18app, in the morning site under stress – Culture & Shows

Over 70 thousand registrations already completed at 5 pm on April 1, with a pace that from the opening at 12, which has remained at 240 registrations per minute. The 18app is back with the possibility for 18-year-olds – in this case those born in 2002 – to spend up to 500 euros on culture, and the answer is high, with a large amount of news traffic also on social networks, so much so that the site went to stress and there were several moments of impasse at least in the early hours, with the situation then returning to normal in the afternoon. Introduced in 2016 by the then Renzi government, the initiative is in its fifth edition. During the first experiment for those born in 1998, almost 360,000 children joined the initiative out of 574,593 entitled.

Despite the initial difficulties and the flop of the results in the purchasing field (only 6.3% of the amount allocated was spent due to the complicated bureaucratic mechanism necessary to activate the contribution), the use has grown over the years, so much so that it has become a model also abroad (France above all). From the first edition to today, about 1.6 million young people who have spent over 730 million euros on culture have signed up for the smartphone application 18app, specially created to use credit. Of this figure, 83% was spent on the purchase of books, 14% on concerts and music, while the remaining 3% was spent on other various cultural expenses. However, the money can also be invested in music and theater courses, foreign languages, museums and newspaper subscriptions, even in digital format.