This week, Pokémon Go was finally released for iPhone and Android users in the U.S., and the boom surrounding the game has been utterly remarkable. I can’t peruse Facebook for five minutes before running into a status update, meme or article related to the wildly popular app game. Even major organizations like GQ have commented on its sudden popularity, even if GQ manages to sound like a grumpy, offensive old man while doing so.

Whatever. I think we have to just sit back and appreciate the absurdly immediate success that this game has drummed up. People everywhere are dedicating time, energy (quite literally when it comes to the battery drain) and money to this game. Communities of friends and acquaintances are uniting and reconnecting because of this game. People I know who have never gone on walks in their entire lives are suddenly hiking all over town to different PokéStops and gyms.

And it's interesting, really. I mean, the game is pretty damn simple, when it comes down to it. It's an augmented reality GPS-oriented collect-a-thon game. Is it the Pokémon label that makes it so instantly appealing, then?

I truly think so — but not in the shallow, commercialistic way you might think I mean. I think Pokémon Go succeeds because, in this heartbreakingly grim point in time, the game sweeps us up in a wave of nostalgia and brings us back to a simpler and innocent time in our lives. The game succeeds because it promises us that, for a little while, we can be kids again. We can be just a bunch of schoolyard friends again, chatting about our top six Pokémon and battling gyms together. Instead of being left with the arguments of Trump and Hillary supporters and the debates on whether or not police lives are worth the same as black lives (news flash: all lives are equally important, but support for everyone in pain right now just makes sense), this game lets us argue about which Pokémon team is better (it's Team Mystic, by the way).

It's honestly just a good reminder that we all need something to help us hold onto our innocence and our childhood — something to ground us, no matter what bad stuff we might encounter in our lives.