Considering China's literacy rate grew from 20 percent in 1956 to 65 percent in 1982 (and now 97% in 2020 which is insane for such a highly rural country – 43% of the population, to give an idea) due to them focusing on Simplified Chinese, you're just wrong in stating it "didn't do anything". In fact, Mao got the idea from seeing Japan's success in improving literacy by simplifying Kanji into Shinjitai, so you're wrong twice...

Of course, it went hand-and-hand with the government's education reforms, it doesn't deserve all the credit. But it helped a LOT. It can be argued that it's no longer a factor because of the access to education Chinese have now, and I'd agree, but it helped when literacy was in need of improvement.

Obviously though, different characters is a small change compared to completely rewriting the sentences to simplify it, like this does here.