Pokemon has always been popular.  I remembering watching the TV show when I was in 3^rd grade and playing the games from middle school onward.  The games have always been engaging and imaginative.  So, when last week a brand new Pokemon game came out being the first major Pokemon game released for mobile phones, I thought to myself sure it will be popular, but I did not expect this.

Within 24 hours, the game became the top downloaded free app in the Apple Store and Google Play Store surpassing all social media apps.  In the past week, according to USA Today, more than 21 million users have downloaded the game in the U.S. and use it daily.  According to Forbes, the game is set to overtake Twitter in the number of daily users.

In case you don’t know what the game is about.  It was conceived by a Japanese man named Satoshi Tajiri based on his childhood experiences of going out in rural Tokyo in the late 1960s and early 1970s (when there were still areas that were rural) and catching bugs and collecting them.  As Tokyo became more urbanized, he realized that his childhood hobby would never be experienced by others in the way he had.  This led him to create the Pokemon video games in which the player assumes the role of a character that moves in a virtual world made up of cities, forests, and deserts, and catches creatures called Pokemon and uses them to battle other people’s Pokemon for sport.

I took a walk in the park last week, two days after the game came out, and I saw at least 30, maybe up to 50, people playing the game in the early afternoon all totally focused on their phone screens.  Later that evening, I saw two cars come in to my church (because it is designated as a gym, as many churches automatically are, for people to battle others’ Pokemon), and I found out they were playing Pokemon Go.  As I was driving home, I saw the same park almost totally packed with cars after dark.   This park is never crowded at night.  Yesterday, I saw at least 500 people walking in the park in the evening all staring at their phones, no doubt playing Pokemon Go.

With the advent of this game, there are positives and negatives.  However, the negatives outweigh the positives.

Positive # 1: Getting people to go outside

I saw a meme joking that what Michelle Obama tried to do in eight years which is getting people to become more active and go outside and walk, Nintendo did in 24 hours.  It’s true; I have not seen parks packed like this ever.  The first positive of the game Pokemon Go is that it has made people become more active, go outside, and actually be in the world.

Positive # 2: Keeping people away from social media

As mentioned above, people have been using Pokemon Go more than social media in the last several days.  For younger people especially, this is great.  Teenagers should not be using social media because of the complaints I as well as most of you have heard from countless teenagers and their parents about the type of treatment they see on social media.  Children are still forming an idea of how to interact with others, so the last thing we should do is give them more time interacting with each other and without supervision too.  I think social media requires a grown-up mindset in which people do not mistreat each other.  So, this is the second positive from Pokemon Go, which is that people spend less time on social media.

Positive # 3: Beginning to create a community

What I noticed while walking at the park last Saturday was that people were interacting in real life over the game, and in a sense they began creating a community over the game.  However, this type of interaction leads to several of the negatives described below.

Negative # 1: Loss of placefulness for a virtual world

I have written about the importance of placefulness in another article, but while Pokemon Go gets people to go out into the real world and walk around, the reality is they are looking for and catching creatures that are not really there, so their preoccupation is over virtual reality and not reality.

Negative # 2: Distraction

The second negative and where the game begins to get dangerous is in the distractibility it poses for individuals.  I have seen people driving while playing the game.  I have seen people on bikes playing the game.  Forget the people running into others or walls or falling down and getting hurt silly or even beginning to walk on the crosswalk without looking to see if everyone has stopped to let them pass.  People can get seriously hurt because of this game.

Negative # 3: Strangers coming onto private property

On Saturday night of last week, I saw several people coming into my church’s parking lot, and on Sunday, and on Monday, and so on.  This is because my church, like countless other churches across the U.S., is designated as a gym in the game.  This means it is one of the few places people can use their Pokemon to battle.  This was done by the game’s producers and designers without any church’s consent, and the process to get it removed is tedious.  Churches are supposed to be places of familiarity, not places where 20-30 year-old strangers gather to play a child’s game.  Think of the things that can go foul.

Negative # 4: Talking to strangers

Like mentioned above, the game has encouraged people to talk to other players.  Just because a 27-year-old is playing Pokemon does not mean that person is a nice guy.  Also, just because nearly everyone you see now on their phones is playing Pokemon does not mean you should approach strangers and ask them if they are playing.  Take this story for example, a 21-year-old in Oregon was playing the game at the park at 1 o’clock in the morning when he saw someone on his phone.  He went up to the person and asked him if he was playing Pokemon Go, to which the guy answered “What?” and pulled out a knife and stabbed the 21-year-old.  In total disregard for himself, the 21-year-old continued playing Pokemon Go that night, and then went to the hospital where he got eight stitches.

Negative # 5: Wandering around to areas where you have not been before 

Satoshi Tajiri has always wanted to replicate his original experience of hunting and catching bugs in rural Tokyo in the 1960s and early 1970s.  Pokemon Go is the closest that any game has come to his original vision.  It encourages people to wander around to find Pokemon by showing them on their phone screens grass tossing up and down even if it is far.  So, people naturally walk to those areas to find Pokemon.  However, this is not 1960s Japan, and society is not as conservative as it once was.  Take this story, for example.  People were lured to a secluded area to find Pokemon only to find robbers with guns pointed at them.  The reason they were able to do this in the first place is because they placed a lure on one of the objects in the game called a Pokespot which indicates to players that there are a lot of Pokemon there.  The people got lured into a trap.

Overall, the negatives of Pokemon Go far outweigh the positives.  The game’s producers should not automatically make churches gyms for players to come and battle their Pokemon in, which takes away from the sanctity of churches, and turns every place just like every other place with no difference in value, which I discuss in my article, “Placefulness.”  People should be careful, and parents should be extremely cautious, and be the parents and tell their children “no” unless they are supervised by their parents.  If you want an alternative, play the Nintendo DS Pokemon games; they are much higher in quality and pose no risk to people playing them other than sitting long hours at the couch.

What are your experiences with the game Pokemon Go?  What funny things have you seen related to people playing the game?  What dangerous stories have you heard from people that are close to you related to the playing of this game?