Pokemon GO is the latest video game taking the world by storm…
Earlier this month, Niantic released an augmented reality game, Pokemon GO, which uses your smart phone’s camera and GPS, to encourage people to get out and explore one’s city, finding and capturing cute and furry pocket monsters – Pokemons. (1)
Based on the original 1995 game, Pokemon for Game Boy, this just shows how amazing technology can be.
And perhaps also how disturbing…
Some have praised Pokemon GO for helping people with social anxiety get out and about and socialise more – check out the hoards of people at Central Park in NYC – crazy huh? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLdWbwQJWI0)
And, the game also allows for users to communicate and interact to help each other find and collect more Pokemons.
Pokemon GO has also inadvertently made people exercise more because it’s fun to go around and find the different Pokemons. This can of course, improve mood and reduce depression. However, the disturbing part of this phenomena are that the number of reported accidents and incidents seem to be on the rise.
Pedestrians have been reported to be standing in the middle of traffic, drivers are stopping their cars in the middle of a highway and even ploughing into stationary police cars while playing the game (2).
More worrisome, is the fact that people are falling into bodies of water (check out this self-confessed idiot: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzPtFz-baMg) , being led to Hells Angels headquarters (3) or into cemeteries and memorial sites such as the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum (1).
Sadly, there has also been deaths reported as a result of the game – Jerson Lopez de Leon, 18, was shot and killed in Guatamala and his cousin Daniel Moises Picen, 17, badly wounded.
Police are uncertain how they ended being shot, but believe that they may have walked into a bad neighbourhood.
Is technology to blame?
While I can’t answer that, I can at least share my Top 5 Things I’ve Learnt from Pokemon:
- Make exercise fun – Grab some mates together and having a laugh by not taking it too seriously
- Connect with nature – Get out and about without having your face glued to your phone
- Be aware of your surroundings – So many people get so caught up in their daily lives that sometimes we miss the little things, or we take the good things for granted. Stop for a moment and look around you and appreciate all the abundance you have around you
- Be conscious of what you’re chasing – don’t get so caught up that you miss the important things in life – you can always make more money or get another job, but people aren’t here forever
- Life is not a video game – while it may be nice to have an avatar and live in an augmented reality state, it’s not real. We need to start taking responsibilities for our actions or non-actions in this life that we have. We only have one life, not three or more like Pac-Man so make the most of it today!
References:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokemon_Go
2. http://news.com.au
3. http://nzherald.co.nz