Pokémon GO is a new app that launched on July 6, and chances are you’ve heard of it. Many people had been following the development of this app, and it had a large following of Pokémon fans even before its release. When it appeared on the app store unannounced, Pokémon fans across the country were ecstatic. The game’s appeal to the millennial generation offers a sense of nostalgia and is quite literally a dream come true for some. However, the success among non-Pokémon fans was unexpected. In fact, the app has exploded, surpassing Twitter and Tinder in popularity. With so many people active on the app, the way we spend our free time has changed dramatically.
If you had asked me in June what my friends and I spend time doing, I would say we generally spent time at each other’s houses playing board games, card games and video games. I would have told you we go out for meals together (our favorite is fried chicken) and see movies. We play sand volleyball occasionally and enjoy visiting local bars. But since the release of Pokémon GO, our interests have changed. Now, when we go out to dinner we make an effort to walk around the area a bit to catch Pokémon. We have made trips to parks around our area – parks that I haven’t visited since 2009 when I did a project on wildflowers for biology. We go on walks and explore new areas. We walk around the downtown area instead of just staying at our usual bar. We are exploring our hometown.
Since the release of Pokémon GO, I made a trip to San Antonio, Texas with my friend. We visited Six Flags Fiesta Texas and Sea World San Antonio (which ironically had a ton of fire-type Pokémon). But everywhere we went, we walked a little extra, saw a little more. When we visited the Riverwalk, we spent three hours exploring everywhere we could looking for Pokémon. We saw statues, historical sites, and even met some new people, all through Pokémon GO. On our way back home, we stopped by to visit some friends in Austin and decided to go catch Pokémon near the state capitol. We walked around and explored the surrounding area and paused at a Civil War memorial nearby. Sure, I caught a lot of cool Pokémon, but I also learned about some Texas history along the way. I would have never visited that area otherwise.
Pokémon GO is bringing people to historic sites and places of cultural significance. In a world where our culture has been largely digitized through social media, Pokémon GO has inspired our generation to go out and explore the areas around our home, schools and workplaces. We are more in tune with history through visiting memorials and are becoming more active by visiting parks. We are talking to people we would have never spoken to before and are making friends on the hunt to find that Growlithe nearby. We are more unified as a generation than we have ever been. It sounds silly to think that a phone app could encourage unity, but it has. No matter if you are Team Instinct, Team Mystic or Team Valor, the friendly competition and cooperation is bringing you in contact with people you would have never met before and will take you places you would have never gone.
So thank you to Nintendo, The Pokémon Company and Niantic for making many ‘90s kids’ dreams come true. You have inspired many to go out and explore the world we live in. You are changing the way we are spending our free time and encouraging us to engage each other. You are changing the world.
