Testing the Efficacy of Pokemon Go for Increasing Physical Activity

Pokémon Go Modestly Increases Time Spent Active Among Healthy Adults

Historically, increasing activity was synonymous with exercise; however, it is now thought that even much more modest activity levels (e.g., simply walking) or merely decreasing the proportion of sedentary time may be sufficient to decrease future morbidity and mortality. Some interventions designed to increase activity have shown promise; others have been less successful. But even promising interventions are often difficult to generalize to real-life clinical settings. One barrier to monitoring the effectiveness of interventions has been the lack of availability of accurate, reliable and inexpensive personal activity monitoring equipment. The availability of inexpensive pedometers, and, more recently, low cost triaxial accelerometers, has now made it much easier to monitor activity levels and provide feedback to users. These devices are ideal for capturing activity associated with walking, the most popular and acceptable form of exercise, but only if patients actually wear them. Thus, there is a need to develop pragmatic approaches that encourage patients to not only wear these monitoring devices, but also motivate them to increase their activity.

In recent years, games have been used in a variety of settings to motivate and change behavior. Games not only provide performance feedback to patients, but also provide incentives for achieving goals in a context that is fun, intrinsically rewarding, and easy to understand. Successful games effectively exploit motivating social factors (e.g., competition, peer support, and entertainment) to maintain interest and engage participants. Steps are counted using a commercially available triaxial accelerometer (e.g., a FitBit). Pokemon Go is an augmented reality game that encourages players to go outside to search for Pokemon creatures.

Inclusion Criteria:

• 18-80 years of age, healthy adults, own smart phone, have access to the Internet, fluent in English, no contraindications to physical activity, not pregnant or planning to become pregnant, had not previously played Pokemon Go game

Exclusion Criteria:

• <18 year or older than 80 years of age, did not own smart phone, did not have access to the Internet, not fluent in English, any contraindications to physical activity, pregnant or planning to become pregnant in next 2 months, had previously played Pokemon Go game