Pokemon Go may help with depression, according to a study

Pokemon Go might alleviate mild depression symptoms, it turns out. The London School of Economics and Political Science has published a new study titled “Location Based Mobile Gaming and Local Depression Trends” PokemonGo “. It argues that PokemonGo may help users with mild depression. This is because the game encourages socialization and physical activity. The Gamer first covered this study.

The study was published in Journal of Management Information Systems. It measures regional depression by using “well-established mechanisms from the medical and social health literature, internet searches of depression-related words,” to determine how many people are searching for terms such as “depression,” stress, anxiety, and fatigue in a particular region.

The data covers 166 different regions, 15 of which are in English-speaking countries, and spans a period of 50 weeks between January 1, 2016, and December 12, 2016. (Those dates include a time period that covers before and after Pokemon Go‘s release.)

Pokemon Go is a mobile augmented-reality game from Niantic in which you can battle and catch Pokemon based on your location. While the developers altered the game because of the Covid-19 pandemic, it largely requires you to actually get out and take a walk to collect Pokemon and battle with them at virtual gyms. Other features of the game, like Community Days, where certain Pokemon appear more often, further encourage players to get outside and perhaps meet other players during the event. These factors may help to reduce depression symptoms, according to the study.

If you want to connect and play with other trainers, Polygon has a complete list of PokemonGo Community Day for 2022..