Pokemon Go Rethink: Social Benefit [Part 3]

Source: http://bit.ly/2aGcfk0

Welcome to Part 3 where I emphasize the social benefit with Pokemon Go. Somehow this part is highly relavent with Part 2 where I discuss about mental health benefit. So how does this mental health benefit related to social benefit?

The Good:

There are many aspects for social benefit but it can be unified into one reason, a new activity is available now. You can spend this time with your love one like family, bf/gf and friends to hunt Pokemon whenever you are free. Through this activity, it is a good idea to improve the bonding.

Family Bonding
Along the street, do you know what are the sweetest things I saw around the people who played Pokemon Go.
Either a 35 years old father brought his 3-5 years old child to hunt Pokemon Go together or
a 20+ years old man brought his 55 years old mom to hunt Pokemon Go together or
As simple as a group of family hunt Pokemon together in the park.
If you are a father and mother who were born in the 80's and 90's, cannot deny that Pokemon used to be your childhood. With Pokemon Go, you are able to share the same childhood together with your children.
Isn't that one of the most beautiful thing you can do with your children?

Friendship Bonding
These days, it is very hard to call your friend to hang out when all of you joined the labour forces. Many reasons such as time availability were different and not everyone earned the same income as you to hang out in fancy places.

Now Pokemon Go was launched, who are not excited about it? As this is an augmented reality game where players could experience partially about the life of Pokemon trainers unlike virtual reality through TV or Gameboy where you only saw it and playing around with your fingers.

With Pokemon Go, you guys have an excuse to invite your friends to hunt Pokemon together. In fact, most players prefer to hunt in group, because this apps drained a lot of battery life with the apps, GPS and Data connection. In my previous post, I mentioned there are some other apps are effective to track Pokemon but it will drain more battery life as you are using two apps instead of one with GPS and Data Connections. Therefore, your friends are happily to have you if you were willing to do the tracker role.

Relationship Bonding
If so lucky, your gf/bf have the same Pokemon Childhood as you did, now it is a great moment where you can share this nostalgic moment together to hunt Pokemon. Even your gf/bf were not Pokemon Fans, it never late to reintroduce the cuteness of Pokemon, just like Minion were so popular among 20-30+ as well other than children.

In addition, many relationship can't last long due to lack of excitement. Mature couple may seek trust, sense of security and commitment as their priority to last the relationship but there were too many immature couple in reality where they find excitement. So now here is a fresh new activity to make your love one got excited to hunt Pokemon together.

Or maybe finally you can give an excuse to invite your love one to hunt Pokemon together in group so that there is an opportunity to develop your relationship with him/her in the case when you got friendzoned.

Whether you invest time with family, friends or your love one, this social benefit is very effective to heal depression and a broken heart as inspired by ASAP Science's video on The Science of Heartbreak

The Bad

The only flaw about this social benefit is who should you invest time to hunt Pokemon together? Most of us would pick friends or your potential love because they shared the same childhood. Meanwhile, if you spend more time on this app with friends, it is likely that you spent less time with your family due to the obsession behaviour I mentioned in Part 2.

For example, otaku used to spend whole day inside the room but the parents could still find him/her inside the room. Now, otaku are willing to leave their room to hunt Pokemon. The parents may be happy about their child finally expose to the real world but the price is spending less time with them.

Therefore, it is really sweet to see a 20+ years old boy bring his 50-60+ moms to hunt Pokemon together.

Conclusion

With this apps, we have a new excuse to connect to our family, friends and our potential love outside of Facebook. Walk together, enjoy together to hunt Pokemon. The only flaw is who should you spend time with?

Advice

It's all about time management. For example, my principle is never hang out with friends on Sunday as Sunday is Family Day. At least, spend one precious Sunday to be with your Family whole day whether hunt Pokemon together, shopping together or conventional exercise together.

Pokemon Go Rethink: Mental Health [Part 2]

Source: http://bit.ly/2aGcfk0

Last time, I only emphasize on physical health which I concluded that it was not really a fitness app after all then how about the mental health?

The Good:

As I mentioned in the previous post, this apps was so powerful to convince otaku to leave their computer and their room to explore their neighbourhood. In fact, it is very good to stay away from social media.

In social media, every issue can be very sensitive and emotional especially some experts found out that social media users like Facebook or even Google users fell into victims as Facebook or Google's lab rat. According to Alltime10s, Facebook had done plenty social experiment to manipulate users' emotion. For example, they purposely make all the negative news on your top feeds or the positives news then they check your reactions. Or maybe the reactions features are a marketing analytical tool to help corporate to check the marketing value of their product. If let said, you fell into the victim as negative news on your top feeds, how are you going to have a good day?

For Google, it is believed to be used as political tool. According to SourceFed, they suspect Google is biased to Hillary Clinton. It is harder to find Hillary Clinton's scandal if you used Google to search it because non-American don't really understand why did Trump has so many supporters. My point is Google also has the capability to manipulate our mind. In my own opinion, it is very unhealthy to stay in the social media for too long.

When a human brain expose too much of frustration and sadness from the social media, that is very unhealthy for the brain. In long term, that person might be ended up with depression. Famous actor like Robin William got killed by depression although he had brought us joy and fun during his lifetime.

Now Pokemon Go encourages us to leave our computer away and leave our room to hunt Pokemon around our neighbour or travel across other neighbourhood. On the other hand, this is an augmented reality game, it required physical workout to play the game. In the past, we only played Gameboy to hunt Pokemon which is pure virtual reality but now it is augmented reality that allowed players to experience how was it to be a Pokemon Trainer to catch them all within the neighbourhood. Due to this nostalgic effect, our brain will emit good hormone that make us happy and keep our brain healthy.

This is like a battle between Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. Obsession toward augmented reality is better than virtual reality in my opinion. When you spent more time to explore the neighbourhood, you started to realize some weird building or landmarks were marked by the Poke Stop. For example, there was an Obama statue in my neighbourhood, I only knew it when I played Pokemon Go. Apparently, it makes me feel like my place is a very interesting place. I started to know my neighbourhood better.

Most of the time, players used PokeVision to locate Pokemon then they will gather at a specific spot to hunt the rare Pokemon. As a results, it is very crowded when you go to hot spot like a public park, playground and promenade. In those hot spots, it is amazing to observe the community while hunting. Either you would see a group of happy family hunted Pokemon together, a group of lovely couples, a group of friends and many otaku who hunted alone XD.

The fun part is everyone rush to a spot when someone detected a rare Pokemon there. This game somehow encourage a social interaction that is beneficial to the mental health as compared to connection through Facebook.

Hence, it is healthier to obsessed with augmented reality to learn the reality that we used to live in instead of the virtual reality where the reality there seem to be perfect or social media where our mind was manipulated silently. I am fully agree that it really help to fight depression which is the major first world problem.

The Bad:

Here is a grey area about obsession. If you are obsessed for something good, we called it, determination but it is addiction when it is something bad just like drug. Apparently, this augmented reality apps did play around our emotion too. For example, you were run out of Pokeball when there was a rare Pokemon, your bag was full such that you were unable to get free PokeStop, lost GPS and Data connection, out of battery and the worst part, spending half of your Pokeballs and you still didn't catch the Pokemon then it fled.

Either it makes people to be obsessed to catch them all or level up quickly to be a Pokemon Master in the gym. As you level up, it is harder to get Pokeballs and it took a lot of Pokeballs to catch a rare Pokemon or Pokemon with CP200 above.

With this obsession, productivity might be dropped significantly. For example, some players would install Pokedetector to notify them a Pokemon was nearby. Imagine you were working, and the Pokedetector notifies you that there was a rare Pokemon within a 5-10m, are you tempted to go there and catch it? If you are professional, you should be able to withstand this temptation but how many were able to resist it?

As mentioned in my previous post, I spent 5km/day to hunt Pokemon. 5km consumed me around 2 hrs. Before it was released in Hong Kong, I bought about 5-10 book from Book Fair to expand my horizon but it is sabotaged now if I couldn't control myself to limit my time on Pokemon Go. Therefore, my self development's productivity was dropped.

In my opinion, it is not suitable a guy like me who has a lot of plan to execute lol.

Another thing about obsession is we are always blinded by it. As recalled in Batman:The Animated Series, the Episode, "I am the Night", Batman said, "a fanatic is someone who redoubles his efforts while losing sight of his goal."

As you know, people are very obsessed to achieve their goal without considering the potential danger during the journey. For example, looking at the device while crossing the road is very dangerous. It was red light for the pedestrians but they insisted to cross the road without bothering any vehicle were approaching. Another case, like they found a rare Pokemon at a spot then everyone ran over there without considering the people around so there were quite a number of body collision. Or maybe it was a running track or cycling track, but Pokemon Go players were standing there to sabotage the active runner and cyclists.

Recently happened in Hong Kong, the local police was concerned whether do they need to send police to do crowd control on any hot spot where players play Pokemon Go.

In fact, this phenomena can be seen as an illness. An illness that endangers the players.

Conclusion:

It is a good apps to fight depression and make us more connected to our community but obsession without consideration may drop the productivity and endanger the players themselves.

Advice:

Please be considerate whenever you play Pokemon Go.
Don't need to rush when you still have plenty of time to catch it unless it would be banned in the future.
Always stay alert to the surrounding.
Lastly, please don't litter the neighbourhood.

Pokemon Go Rethink: Physical Health [Part 1]

Source: http://bit.ly/2aGcfk0

Today marked it as the fifth day that Pokemon Go was launced in Hong Kong while people started playing it in US 20+ days earlier therefore I had been actively visited Google Play to check the availability of Pokemon Go Apps in Hong Kong for 25 days. After playing it for 5 days actively, I would like to give some comments and concerns about Pokemon Go.

My comments can be classified in these aspectss:

1. Physical Health
2. Mental Health
3. Social Benefit
3. Economic Benefit and Potential Abuse

With all these aspects above, there are the good and the bad. Today, I would like to focus on the Physical Health

The Good:

Cannot deny that most people learn that walking can be a tiring exercise. In the game, it really encourage players to walk very often. For example, you need to walk in order hunt your desired Pokemon and secondly you would receive Eggs sometime whenever you paid a visit to the PokeStop, the only way to hatch the eggs is walking from 2km, 5km and 10km.

For me, I spent average 5km a day to play the game. Walking for 5km a day really burns a lot of calories. According to Calorie Calculator , I lost 295 calories per day. Is it a lot? For a person who never have routine exercise, 295 calories per day is really a lot.

For your information, it is Summer Vacation now, children and teenagers may spend more time so it is not surprise that they may walk more than 10 km per day.

The Bad:

This game is very influential to convince otaku (who spent most time in the room obsessed with social media, cybergaming, etc alone) to leave their room and explore their neighbourhood. Even a loner is willing to call up his/her friend to hunt Pokemon together.

The downside is those people who spend almost no time for exercise before the release of Pokemon Go, their obsession for this game will give them a terrible physical pain on their knee and feet. Human body are programmed to be adaptive but only under routine condition.

I had been practice Chinese Martial Arts for more than 10 years, I always model human body like a rubber. Most Chinese Martial Artists have a very flexible body to bend their body because flexibility improve agility and minimize injury.

Just like rubber, the rubber become more flexible and tougher when it was stretched frequently whereas rubber that never experience stretching for a very long period of time, it will be more brittle and easily broken when it was stretched due to natural decay.

For the feet, otaku who rarely walk a longer distance do not realize the important of high quality shoe. If you wore a shoe with less elastic, each step your feet would suffer the impact on the floor. As Newton's Third law told us that, how much impact force that your feet will experience from the ground is the same as how much force your feet exert on the ground each step.

For example, my flipflop's bottom was harder than my running shoe. If I played Pokemon Go with my flipflop, my feet will be very painful after I decided to rest whereas my running shoe's bottom was softer and elasti, it reduced the impact from ground for each steps I walk.

On the other hand, for frequent walkers or sportsperson, we normally suffered the pain on our arm and our necks because it is more convenient to look down on our phone than placing our phone in front of our face to maintain our neck straight. That only convenient when it is short term. For longer term, you will feel the pain on the neck and the arm that was holding your phone for 5km. Once again, you will be more tiring and exhausted after you ended the hunting. In a longer period of time, it might try to reshape your healthy posture.

Therefore, it isn't that healthy after all.

Furthermore, experienced exercise practitioners are able to resist the temptation to consume high calories food. Unlike those who never spent anytime on exercise, they might consume high calories food after they stopped the game due to tiring. Apparently, the calories burning efficiency is dropped. To be honest, I rarely take coke and soft drink when I realize the bad impact on our tooth however I always be tempted to have a coke after the 5km walk.

Lastly, it is also depend on what device are you using. When you runs the apps with data and GPS were active, the processors did more work and released a lot of heat. As an engineer, this is a big problem.

If your device has a bad heat insulation, your hand will feel the heat while playing the game. Long term exposure to hot device may be bad for your cells on your palm.

On the other hand, if your device has good heat insulation, the heat cannot escape away inside the device then your device was building up the heat. It is true that your palm won't feel the heat however it is not only threaten your health, it is also threaten your safety.

When your device reached high temperature, you should realize that your device cannot function properly which is warning to you that stop using the phone and let it cool down. Otherwise, you are boiling your lithium ion battery which is highly explosive therefore it is common to hear that some people was killed by their own phone/notebook when they charged it on the bed.

Please use your common sense, stop hunting the Pokemon when it is really really hot. Probably switch off the Apps and take a break for 10-15 mins to cool down your device and do some simple stretching to minimize the pain and injury.

Conclusion:

It is true that it burned calories that encourage players to walk from 2km - 10km or perhaps even more due to obsession. The price is you may lose your healthy posture in long term. Even though it really burns a lot of calories, it also depend on the player's temptation to consume high calories food and drinks. Finally, the device will be getting hotter that may fry your cells or has the potential to explode to take your life.

Advice:

Don't be too obsessed, sometime you need to learn how to take a break for you to regain a healthy posture and cool down your phone.
Secondly, select a good shoe to hunt your Pokemon.