Ten years later in November 2023, Chloe randomly was playing Pokemon Go. I was curious what she was doing and announced, "Well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
Every since Space Invaders entered my life in 1980, video games have been a part of it. Soon, it was Mario Bros. and Tecmo Super Bowl on Nintendo, and now, this Pokemon Go thing, I must admit, is a full-on addiction. I think it's a healthy addiction, but I'm not 100 percent sure.
I just won't stop playing. Most weeks, I walk more than 50 kilometers (31 miles) to get rewards from the app.
For those who know the game, you will not need this brief explanation. Pokemon Go is an augmented reality game that was globally popular as soon as it came out in 2016. Augmented reality means that it combines real world and computer-generated content.
So I'll be walking down the street and see a mural in real life, but then that mural will exist on my phone as a Pokestop to spin (click on), collect as a postcard and get rewards. That's pretty cool. I've collected more than 12,000 of those. ... Whoa. I've saved 650 of them.
And then there's the characters, the Pokemon. There are more than 1,000 of those. They're cute and collectable, kind of like virtual Beanie Babies. I've snagged more than 14,000 Pokemon. ... Egads.
When I'm pretending this isn't an addiction, I liken it to the best Fitbit ever because it rewards me for walking. Good deal!
Walking in different places is my favorite thing about it. Without that, I wouldn't do it. Chloe recently had me download the new Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket, a virtual card game. It doesn't work at all for me. It has nothing to do with walking. I'm not a fan of non-physical video games. Pinball and Pokemon Go at least involve some sort of physical element.
For a lot of 2024, my singular focus in life was to evolve the Pokemon legendary character Zygarde to its fullest form. That meant I had to walk path upon path to collect 250 Zygarde cells. You can only get three Zygarde cells per day, and it's erratic how many one gets for a path. Sometimes, it's zero. And sometimes, I just didn't see them. Getting those cells took forever.
Finally, this past November 2024, I fully evolved Zygarde, and that's the picture of him above. After that mega-accomplishment, I figured the game was over. But then, I just kept playing. I still collected Zygarde cells (I'm not sure why), then I figured out how to use Reddit to find raids and collect legendary Pokemon. What was happening here?
Dude, it is a full-on ADDICTION. Pokemon characters are ranked on a scale of zero to three stars, and typically, there are three versions of each Pokemon like baby, teen and adult. I pretty much have three stars of every Pokemon in every version. Wild!
And I have my Pokemon into teams. I have nine different teams of 18 Pokemon on each. That's 162 specialized Pokemon for my criteria. My most important category "best buddies" just grew to 20. You get a best buddy when you earn 300 hearts with the Pokemon you choose as your sidekick, and getting one best buddy is a pretty lengthy process.
Look, enough already. This all is craziness. It's obsessive video gaming. It's one thing to use Pokemon Go as motivation to walk, but then, why am I putting hours upon hours into the game at home without walking? Where is the justification for that?
I see the mindless phone consumption of my students, and by George, I don't want to be like them. I want to be mindful, and I don't need to devote my life to Pokemon Go. I'm better than that!
In this blog, I've often written about and recommended books that questions social media, the phone and our current attention economy. Reader, Come Home and How to Do Nothing are my favorites. Right now, I just finished a book in a similar vein, Bored and Brilliant by Manoush Zomorodi.
I couldn't agree more with the premise of Bored and Brilliant, that to be more creative, we have to embrace boredom and not give away all of our break moments to screen time. Our brains need time for space, and nowadays, so many people don't give themselves a break away from their phones. For me, I actually am excellent with phone discipline — except for this Pokemon Go thing.
In Bored and Brilliant, Zomorodi suggests deleting the app that we use most and see what happens. She quotes author and tech behavior expert Nir Eyal, who says we should ask this question: "Is this product serving me or hurting me?"
I've had social media off my phone for years and am disciplined enough to look at the news (DW from Germany is what I prefer) only once a day. But the reality is that the kid's game, Pokemon Go, probably isn't serving me any more. Yet I'm confused because it often gets me out to walk. And that's a good thing.
I am thinking of deleting the app, but I just don't know I can do it.
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