Introduction

With the rise of technology, and rising obesity rates many people question whether or not there is a relation between the two. The largest risk groups in america for obesity are teenagers and young adults (Hallal et al., 2012), these are also the people who spend the most time on some kind of technology. Staying inside and not getting exercise is bad you your physical and mental health. Many companies are trying to get the people who play their games more active. The first approach was movement based games. Games that were played with your body instead of a controller, for example the Nintendo Wii or the Xbox Connect  (Tong, Gromala, Shaw, & Choo, 2016). More and more businesses came up new ideas and we ended with Pokemon GO, a game you play on your phone. , and the basic idea of Pokemon GO is that you’re a pokemon trainer trying to catch them all, and to catch Pokemon you have to walk in the real world. This lead to more people getting up and being physically active, but did it. “Pokemon GO and physical activity among college students. A study using Ecological Momentary Assessment” is a study done the original researchers by Oriol Marquet*, Claudia Alberico, Aaron J. Hipp asks thw questions: Are the people who play Pokemon GO more physically active because of it? That is what this study wanted to find out.

Process

The study was done on college kids in North Carolina. The average age was nineteen and a half, and the participants were asked whether they identify as a Pokemon GO player. Around half of the participants Identified as Pokemon GO players. Then the participants would download Pokemon GO and a pacer to track how many steps they took throughout the day. The researchers would look at how many steps you took before downloading Pokemon GO and after to see if there are any differences. The researchers would also monitor when they participants were playing Pokemon GO. This was to tell if the increased physical activity was really due to Pokemon GO or not. Then the participants would also complete a survey in what they did and if Pokémon GO affected there exercise routine.

Results

The results were inconclusive most people didn’t show any difference before and after downloading Pokemon GO. The people that identified themselves as Pokemon GO players did on average have a lot more steps than the non players. There was no difference in the genders as far as the researchers could tell. The researchers also tested whether or not a city or rural environment would affect how much a participant would play and of how long. Because Pokemon GO has feature where most attractive spots, such as tourist destinations and popular/historical sites would have rarer pokemon. Also the real world geography plays a role on what Pokemon appear for you. So people might walk longer to get to some water to find a water type. People who live in cities do tend to play longer and walk longer. Social players didn’t seem to have any difference than players that played alone. During the weekdays and between noon and seven at night, the people who said they play Pokemon GO actually had a increase in physical activity. The numbers overall didn’t show much improvement of people who said they didn’t play Pokemon GO, and the participants who were identified as players barely increased in physical activity.

Improvements

This experiment is not without some flaws. First there is no accounting for exercise outside of walking or running, swimming or lifting. It is also assuming that the participants have their phone on them every time they go out. They mention that instead a of a app an Actual pedometer would’ve worked better. That way they could get a much accurate idea of how much physical activity each participant was getting. The people they recruited were mostly people who had already played Pokemon GO. It would have been interesting to see if a person who had never played or heard of Pokemon GO, if it would have increased their physical activity or not.

Some things that the researchers need to remember about game like Pokemon GO to succeed. One is that it requires a large social and connected fanbase that play the game multiple time a week.A social group is necessary for this game not having friends who a game with you makes the game boring, and you will eventually stop playing.  Another counter arguments is that the only people who grew up playing pokemon will be interested in continually playing pokemon enough to get some positive change in their physical activity. Nintendo will also have to continually put out new updates. Once you collect all the Pokemon there is very little reason to continue playing, unless Nintendo releases new Pokemon every year. With over seven hundred Pokémon it should be able to last someone a few months, if not years. The game only have around three hundred different Pokemon in the game so far but Nintendo is planning on increasing that number and attract new player.

The Future

The next step for the this kind of research would be how to increase the effectiveness of these kinds of games. What kinds of improvement of changes in environment would help people play games like Pokemon GO. They should test other games that make you go outside and compare how effective they were at increasing physical activity. The next test should have multiple groups each playing a different game in some different environments. Maybe try a game that promotes running for example Zombie Run where you have to run away from Zombie attacks. See if increased intensity will have a longer impact and make people want to play longer or just encourage them to start exercising

While the study states that Pokemon GO can increase physical activity in young adults. Young adults who are at the highest risk of obesity have been locked up in their rooms playing videos games. Pokemon GO tried to help fix that. The researchers found “that on weekdays between noon and seven at night Pokemon GO did improve the amount of physical activity teenagers were getting” (3). Pokemon GO is not a perfect solution to the obesity problem in America; the activity is not intense enough to lose weight. But getting outside even a little more than normal and doing physical activity can greatly increase a person’s mental and physical health (Althoff et al., 2016; Gao, 2016; LeBlanc & Chaput, 2016). The researchers were questioning whether or not playing Pokemon GO would take time away from much more intensive and healthy physical activity such as sports, and working out.

Conclusion

In summary there are many positives to games like Pokemon GO it get people outside and active. But there were many problems the researchers overlooked that would need to be fix in the next survey. Many different mobile games are being developed because of the success of Pokemon GO. If this types of games get more popular it won’t end obesity, but it will the teenagers and young adults at least a little physically active which is good for both their physical and mental health.

 

Works Cited

Althoff, T., White, R. W., & Horvitz, E. (2016). Influence of Pokemon Go on physical

Activity: Study and implications. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 18(12),

e315. http://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.6759.

Hallal, P. C., Bauman, A. E., Heath, G. W., Kohl, H. W., Lee, I. M., & Pratt, M. (2012).

Physical activity: More of the same is not enough. The Lancet, 380(9838), 190e191. http://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(12)61027-7.

Tong, X., Gromala, D., Shaw, C. D., & Choo, A. (2016). A field Study: Evaluating

gamification approaches for promoting physical activity with motivational

models of behavior changes. In M. Kurosu (Ed.), Human-computer interaction.

Novel user experiences (Vol. 9733, pp. 417e424). Springer. http://doi.org/10.

1007/978-3-319-39513-5.

Marquet, O., Alberico, C., & Hipp, A. J. (2018). Pokémon GO and physical activity

among college students. A study using Ecological Momentary Assessment.

Computers in Human Behavior,81, 215-222. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2017.12.028