The optimization of reading effect constitutes the core foothold for the high-quality development of digital reading and a key starting point for tackling the prevalent negative problems in digital reading scenarios. Evolving from a single functional tool, digital reading has gradually become a smart digital environment integrating cultural cultivation, life experience, technical services and social collaboration. Nevertheless, its development brings about a series of adverse outcomes, including impaired personal safety and physical and mental health, biased value judgment, and distorted cultural psychology. The fundamental way to eliminate such negative impacts lies in the systematic reshaping and hierarchical upgrading of national digital reading literacy. On the basis of the connotation system of national digital reading literacy and the corresponding 30 evaluation indicators established by the research team in previous studies, this paper takes reading effect as the core orientation and draws on the hierarchical logic of the literacy iceberg model. It constructs a three-dimensional framework for literacy cultivation, covering reading ability, attitude and behavior, reading knowledge, experience, cognition and motivation, as well as reading concept, accomplishment and temperament, and elaborates the internal logical mechanism of the framework. Furthermore, this paper proposes a three-stage collaborative improvement paradigm of “emergency intervention, systematic cultivation and ecological conservation”. The dominant surface layer of the model corrects undesirable reading behaviors to block immediate safety and health risks; the shallow underwater layer consolidates the foundation of literacy cultivation and facilitates individuals’ transformation from passive external constraint to active internal consciousness; the deep underwater layer nurtures deep spiritual connotations and realizes the long-term internalization of individual reading character and value beliefs. This hierarchical and targeted improvement path effectively compensates for the prominent deficiencies in current digital reading literacy cultivation practices, namely prioritizing formal procedures over practical effects, uniform top-down instruction over hierarchical adaptive training, and short-term behavioral rectification over long-term spiritual cultivation. The upgrading of digital reading literacy is not only a vital part of the in-depth implementation of the national reading initiative, but also an inevitable requirement for adapting to digital survival and social development, as well as promoting the comprehensive literacy and all-round development of citizens.