Pokemon GO or Pokemon NO?

Mobile craze causes controversy

Story by Thalia Hawkins, staff writer

We’ve all heard about it in the news. About the family fed up with the players hanging around the Pokestop in their yard. Or the group of people who followed a beacon to hunt Pokemon only to be confronted by armed robbers using the lure for easy pickings. As a location-based augmented reality game, it wows the crowd as you hunt Pokemon to “catch ‘em all” wherever you can find them in the real world. It’s the most popular game in 2016 and has been titled the biggest mobile game in U.S. history.  Yet we can’t forget about the issues caused by this game, making gamers oblivious while hunting virtual creatures in reality.

Despite its popularity, recent accounts have given us insight into whether playing this game is a good or bad influence on teens. Big cases have led Pokemon GO’s creator, Niantic Inc., to live with the fact that their game causes users to find trouble. Niantic has responded by putting various notices that encourage players to take precautions while engaging in the game like, “Remember to be alert at all times” and “Do not play Pokemon GO while driving.”

“Many people don’t use it responsibly,” sophomore Alyssa Kunz said. “For this reason I think the app needs to be modified or changed to make it less dangerous.”

But the game does have its good points. It helps people be socially interactive; players often group together to venture out to capture and battle Pokemon. Plus the game requires a lot of walking–especially the feature that requires you to walk a certain distance in order to hatch eggs. For most, these points triumph the negatives which continuously cause the ratings to skyrocket.

“Pokemon GO motivates people to go out and do things they wouldn’t normally do,” junior Karissa Smith said. “It makes them really excited that there’s this new technology that they can actually interact in the world with.”

However you like to look at it, Pokemon GO is still at the top as far as biggest mobile game in 2016, according to Erik Kain at Forbes Media. There will always be controversy over whether the game is a good or bad influence. But you can’t deny that Pokemon GO has dominated the phones of nearly every teenager in the United States.