‘Pokémon GO’ Encourages Children To Play Outside, Could Improve Their Health, Report Says

Popular location-based augmented reality game, "Pokémon GO," can encourage children to play outside, thus helping improve their health, a leading family doctor claimed in the British Medical Journal.

General Practitioner Dr. Margaret McCartney said Britain’s streets were becoming a “reclaimed playground” of social interaction and old fashioned values thanks to the new game that walking around to catch Pokémons.

"We all need real life connectivity, and the net can facilitate that," McCartney said in the journal, according to the Telegraph. "The possibilities for apps to make the streets an active, reclaimed playground in which to have interconnected fun are boundless. ... Increased physical activity is a tantalising side effect."

Just days after its launch in the United States, the Nintendo-designed game became popular across the world, but also faced negative reports of teenagers getting lost while searching for the virtual monsters and of others who met with accidents.

According to McCartney, such stories masked the benefits of a game that was getting people outdoors.

“We never hear about the things that didn’t happen,” she said. “The heart attacks prevented through more exercise, or the vitamin D deficiency that geeks have avoided, blinking in the sunlight while catching a Pikachu monster.”