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Study estimates Pokemon GO has added over 144 billion steps to US physical activity

by rawmeatcowboy
10 January 2017
GN Version 5.0

"Highly engaged users were almost 3 times as likely to meet official activity guidelines in the 30 days after starting to play Pokémon Go compared with that before. If this user engagement could be sustained, Pokémon Go would have the potential to measurably affect US life expectancy.

We studied the effect of Pokémon Go on physical activity through a combination of large-scale wearable sensor data with search engine logs and showed that the game leads to significant increases in physical activity over a period of 30 days, particularly with the engaged users increasing their average activity by 1473 steps a day or 26 percent.

Based on our findings, we estimate that the game has already added an estimated 144 billion steps to US physical activity. If engagement with Pokémon Go could be sustained over the lifetime of its many users, we estimate that the game would add an estimated 2.825 million years of additional lifetime to its US users "

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