Is Pokémon Go the answer to America’s obesity problem? | Dave Schilling

I am currently writing this under a great deal of stress. The Pokémon Go servers are down. Frankly, if the Pokémon Go servers were up, I wouldn’t be writing at all.

I’d be playing Pokémon Go, because that’s all I do now, and I’m certainly not the only one in that situation. America – nay, the world – is consumed with this totally irrelevant altered reality mobile game in which human beings collect grotesque cartoon monsters hiding throughout the planet.

There are some haters out there who claim Pokémon Go – which distracts people from their everyday lives, encouraging them to collect said monsters wherever they may be, whether in a park or at the Holocaust Museum – is poised to ruin our already tenuous society. But I predict the opposite to be true, because Pokémon Go actually encourages walking. The game might even solve America’s obesity problem forever.

Living in Los Angeles, I hoof it as little as humanly possible. First of all, it’s oppressively hot right now. Second, everything – from my local grocery store to the juicery where I get my greens – is miles away. There’s even a song about how no one in LA walks anywhere. I spend most of my days either in my air-conditioned house or in my air-conditioned car, watching life pass before my eyes with no interest in its contents. Pokémon Go exacerbates this tenfold with its layer of digitized fantasy, but at least I’m putting one foot in front of the other while I do it.

Most video games are played from a seated position. Call of Duty, Halo, Uncharted and the like are best experienced with your behind firmly planted on a luxurious couch. I have seen people play video games while at a standing desk, but those people uniformly look ridiculous, like they’re just about to run out of the room because the fire alarm got pulled. Those Wii Sports games, where people swing a remote control in front of a TV while pretending to play golf, was all the rage a decade ago. But now no one plays them unless they’re drunk after a dinner party or their parents don’t let them watch movies rated PG-13.

Obsolete gaming trends aside, entertainment in this country is becoming more and more sedentary. When was the last time you heard about someone playing racquetball, a sport that was all the rage for health nuts in the 70s, for fun? People play racquetball now just because they’re afraid they might die if they don’t.

Pokémon Go is the first mass entertainment in years to require a person to leave the house to play it. Yes, it’s obnoxious to see someone in a movie theater, a Starbucks line or at a funeral trying to snuff out the nearest Charizard or Squirtle instead of paying attention to what’s happening directly in front of them. But it’s marginally better than Snapchat, which is a massive victory for our culture.

Pokémon Go encourages the average ADD-ravaged millennial to explore their surroundings, not just stand there and put silly filters on it. Again, I recognize that their surroundings in this instance involve shoddy graphics and human characters that dress like models from the Hot Topic website, but this is a victory for living nonetheless.

Imagine the pasty wastoids on XBox Live rising from their self-imposed crypts to find sunshine and fresh air. Picture these hordes of Mountain Dew-addled youngsters realizing that something exists beyond their front door. Humans have to exercise to stay healthy. It’s a physical imperative, but a brisk walk might be the least stimulating part of the average person’s day – unless you enjoy the sounds of car horns or birds chirping, which only old people like. (I realize that citizens of places like New York, San Francisco and Chicago do plenty of walking during the day – both commuting and of the aimless variety. They don’t need the extra help. It’s the children I’m thinking of.)

This is also going to invigorate the decaying malls and public spaces of this nation, as aspiring Level 12 Pokémon trainers descend on our neglected infrastructure. I do worry what will happen when a child decides to go catch a Pikachu he or she found on a freeway on-ramp, but we can deal with that when it happens. At least that child will be in tip-top shape.

We might not be able to make fast food healthier or discourage the gluttony our culture reveres, but we can make walking less unpleasant. You might not ever be interested in real birds chirping, but at least maybe you can find the pleasure in the siren song of a wild Togepi or Fearow. Just try not to get run over by a bus while you’re at it.

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