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Pokémon Go: Good Game, Better Social Network

Pokémon Go tops Twitter’s daily users, sees more engagement than Facebook

A few months ago, the highly anticipated mobile game, Pokémon Go, was released on the app store. To say that it took the world by storm would be an understatement; the app has now been crowned as the “biggest mobile game in U.S. history.” The article above provides some mind-blowing statistics such as the fact that the app now has topped Twitter’s daily users and more notably so, that users spend more minutes per day in Pokémon Go than on Facebook.

 

The biggest difference between Facebook, Twitter, Tinder and other social networks to Pokémon Go is the personal interactions that come along with the technical network. Rather than people communicating from their couches or their computers, this mobile app promotes tangible interactions by scattering Gyms and PokeStops all around the world. In fact, it forces a user to leave their house and explore the land in order to succeed in the game. In urban and highly populated areas such as New York City or San Francisco, people have congregated at parks or national landmarks in search of Pokémon. In a mass gathering with one common goal in mind, it is not at all surprising that friendships are made between total strangers.

 

While users are friendly towards each other, not all relations between users and non-users are positive. One such example is the placement of a PokeStop in a Holocaust Memorial Museum. The members of the museum found it distasteful, unethical and disrespectful to be playing Pokémon Go on the memorial grounds and voiced several complaints to Niantic. Another major problem that seems to be occurring is trespassing. Because the game places Pokémon into the real world, several users ignore boundaries in the process of physically walking and catching the creatures. An extreme example of this is when a few teenagers walked into a mine complex and had to be rescued after getting lost. Within such a dense and connected network, it cannot be expected that all relationships are positive. With this in mind, I believe the positive effects of the game outweigh the negatives because social barriers were broken, physical interaction was reinvigorated and even daily exercise was increased as users had to walk in order to progress in the game.

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