It has been 10 years since 2016 and a lot has changed in the world. From politics to social media, the world is changing a lot these days. But, I want to go back 10 years to the summer of 2016. That summer was legendary and one of the main contributors of this was Pokemon Go. It was released all the way back on July 6th, 2016. See, the main gimmick of this app is that you were to catch Pokemon while walking around in your town using augmented reality. So, the app forces you to go outside in order to play and catch Pokemon. This game took the world by storm during the summer with it reaching 232 million players at its peak. There were hundreds of thousands of people outside on their phones catching pokemon. It was so popular that even Hillary Clinton mentioned Pokemon Go with,”Pokemon Go to the polls.”
However, with people on their phones, there are bound to be problems. Including of course, people playing the game while driving. See, since Pokemon Go encouraged players to go outside, people would often try to cheat this by playing while driving. That way in their logic, it would be more effective than just walking. Now, the amount of headlines that came out of people being in accidents from playing Pokemon Go was concerning. Some examples include:
- On July 23, 2016,” 2 Teens Inadvertently Walk Across Us-Canada Border While Playing Pokemon Go.”
- On August 28, 2016,”Pokemon Go Behind Second Fatal Traffic Accident in Japan, Kyodo Reports
- On July 9th, 2016,”Pokemon Go: Armed Robbers Use Mobile Game to Lure Players into Trap.
The amount of incidents that have happened since the game’s launch was so bad that Niantic, the developers of the app, added messages in the game to help the players stay safe while walking which was as effective as putting a band-aid on a severed limb. As if that wasn’t enough, there were also some problems with the Pokestop feature. See, while walking, certain places would have a Pokestop, allowing players to spin it in the game to receive items in game. However, some of these Pokestops were placed in some very mature places where there shouldn’t be any. Such as cemeteries and even at the Holocaust Museum in Auschwitz. Eventually, Pokemon Go started to die out during the transition into Fall during 2016. But the fact that this amount of fuss was created for an app about catching and battling creatures was both concerning and hilarious.
