Pokémon Go players walk close to 2,000 additional steps each day

[Shawn Knight]

Pokémon Go, the location-based augmented reality game from Niantic, took the world by storm last summer and encouraged millions of gamers to get off the couch and explore the world around them.

The social gameplay generated all sorts of headline-grabbing stories but perhaps the most encouraging news of all comes courtesy of the American Heart Association.

Researchers from Duke University’s School of Nursing studied 167 iPhone users that had played the game since its July 2016 launch and had them submit daily screenshots from the iPhone Health app between June 15 and July 31, 2016.

The team found that before playing the game, participants walked an average of 5,678 steps per day. This figure increased by an average of 1,976 steps each day while playing Pokémon Go.

Data also revealed that participants were twice as likely to reach 10,000 daily steps after playing the game as they were before. What’s more, the percentage of days they reached 10,000 steps increased from 15.3 percent without the game to 27.5 percent while playing.

Naturally, those that had low activity levels or who were overweight appear to benefit the most from the game. This group walked nearly 3,000 additional steps while playing versus the 1,976 overall average from all participants.

Hanzhang Xu, a graduate student at Duke that worked on the research, said that while the average increase of nearly 2,000 additional steps per day may seem small, previous studies show this increase lowers the risk of having a heart attack or stroke by eight percent in high-risk individuals.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/68476-pokmon-go-players-walk-close-2000-additional-steps.html

 

[oldikes]

The amount of extra steps you take playing pokemon go is inversely proportional to the amount of pidgeys and rattatas you find.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

Had Niantic anticipated this trend, they would've launched their own cheapo activity tracker and connected scale, along with a chest strap HRM at a premium price alongside the game and cashed in even more. Hindsight is truly 20/20. I wonder what their next party trick will bring to the table.

 

[IAMTHESTIG]

Stalkers walk on average 5,200 additional steps per day. So it is nearly twice as healthy to be a stalker than to play Pokemon Go.

 

[Uncle Al]

Seriously? People are still playing this game?

 

[gusticles41]

Seriously? People are still playing this game?

Heck yeah, I still play. As do plenty of my late-20 friends...no shame here

I can attest- My step counts are way higher during warm days or days I play GO. I think it could easily average out to +2k steps/day even though I don't play much in Winter.

 

[Nobina]

This game is so **** they have to use walking as an excuse. You can just walk without playing this game you know? Actually, if the only reason you have physical activities is because of a game then you need to sort some stuff out.

 

[petert]

And after level 20 you either need to start spending money or live near pokestops to farm them for pokeballs. Not to mention that the game drains the battery in like 2 hours, server outages and slow downs, inaccurate GPS readings (like walking 3 km and it only recognized 800 m) and so on. I dropped it after a week. Take a good audiobook and walk around without having to look at your screen all the time like a monkey and bend your neck in an unholy position to prevent Sun reflections off your screen. I actually walk more now than with the pokemon game.

 

[petert]

Seriously? People are still playing this game?

Heck yeah, I still play. As do plenty of my late-20 friends...no shame here

I can attest- My step counts are way higher during warm days or days I play GO. I think it could easily average out to +2k steps/day even though I don't play much in Winter.

I wonder what you are doing, I average around 11k steps and I am not even playing the game anymore.

 

[gusticles41]

I wonder what you are doing, I average around 11k steps and I am not even playing the game anymore.

Oh I meant +2k on top of my normal steps. I have a 10k daily goal and *usually* hit that without Pokemon. Except on weekends.

 

[gusticles41]

This game is so **** they have to use walking as an excuse. You can just walk without playing this game you know? Actually, if the only reason you have physical activities is because of a game then you need to sort some stuff out.

Can we just appreciate the fact it's making lazy people slightly less lazy by ~2,000 steps/day? There doesn't have to be that underlying negativity.

 

[agello24]

Nice, but your data use is blown pretty quickly!

 

[Nobina]

Can we just appreciate the fact it's making lazy people slightly less lazy by ~2,000 steps/day? There doesn't have to be that underlying negativity.

I came a little bit hard there, while I don't like the game It's overall not bad to have some physical activites.

 

[James00007]

So many bitter complainers. Playing Pokemon Go is much more fun and better for your health than sitting online miserably criticising what other people like to do.

 

[gusticles41]

Nice, but your data use is blown pretty quickly!

It uses very little data, actually. The battery drain is mostly from GPS use. I just checked the app's data usage from last month. If I had to guess, I walked maybe a total of 8-10 hours in February...not a ton, but a notable amount. Used a whopping 72.67mb.

 

[agello24]

It uses very little data, actually. The battery drain is mostly from GPS use. I just checked the app's data usage from last month. If I had to guess, I walked maybe a total of 8-10 hours in February...not a ton, but a notable amount. Used a whopping 72.67mb.

I live in l.a. its a big city and data use here for pokemon go uses a lot. we dont have a 4-8 gig plan.