UW study finds you should start playing Pokémon Go again

Smartphone game was a gigantic hit last summer, as people flocked to find monsters.

Hundreds of millions may have already given up on last summer’s tech hit, Pokémon Go.  

A new University of Wisconsin-Madison study suggests they should pick the game back up again.

Alex Bonus is among the researchers that found those that play Pokémon Go wind up feeling a little healthier and happier.

“It’s sort of like flying in the face of some of the negative ideas that were floating around about it when it first came out,” Bonus said.

The game, played through your smartphone camera, encourages you to tracked make believe monsters that can be seen through the lens in the real world.

And, those who played it, experienced a wide range of positive benefits.

“We weren’t sure if (the study) would really come out,” Bonus said, “but we could, at least anecdotally, see that people were talking about – being really happy, reflecting on their past, their childhood or at least just walking around getting exercise at the bare minimum.”

Bonus says results seemed to be independent of age of players. Older adults seemed to be having just as much fun with the game as young people.  

Bonus wasn’t sure what or how the data would work out in the study.

“So we were interested in if we could actually document this or show this empirically and when we started analyzing it,” he said. “We were shocked how much of it was working. 

“It’s very rare that a study comes out and everything is working out the way you kind of predicted it would.”

Not every aspect of the game is a benefit, of course. Playing too much, playing while driving or ending up somewhere off-limits were many of the ways it was frowned upon.