Until recently, MacKenzie Olsberg's nightly commute home from her office in Chicago involved a train, a bus and a short walk. Now, she skips the bus and walks the last mile and a half.
Because of Pokemon Go.
"Since Pokemon came out, I've found that I'm a lot more engaged in what's around, and I've frequently gotten off the beaten track just so I can get that Pokemon that's nearby," says Olsberg, 29. Then she deadpans: "I didn't know there were so many Eevees around my house." (That's a rare type of Pokemon).
Pokemon Go, an augmented reality game that scatters Pokemon creatures across the country, came out July 6, and the impact has been striking. Not just on neighborhoods across the nation -- which filled with zombielike players holding their cellphones like divining rods -- but on step count.
The founders of Cardiogram, an app for Apple Watch that analyzes heart-rate data, looked at heart rate and exercise information from 35,000 Cardiogram users, and saw an increase in their overall exercise the weekend after Pokemon Go was released. The exercise increase was across the board -- the app makers have no way of knowing who was actually using Pokemon Go. On the day of the release, about 45 percent of users were each exercising 30 or more minutes. Two days later, on a Saturday, that number rose to 50 percent. The next day, it hit 53 percent.
"The fact that it's a population-level effect that's visible is actually pretty impressive on Pokemon Go's part," said Cardiogram co-founder Brandon Ballinger.
Johnson Hsieh, who co-founded Cardiogram with Ballinger, added that his own step count has also risen since he started playing Pokemon Go.
"I walk to work and home every day and I definitely spend more time taking detours," Hsieh said.
Jawbone, which makes the UP fitness tracker, took a closer look at its users who mentioned Pokemon Go in their comments (UP users can interact with friends through the app) and compared their steps the weekend after the Pokemon release with previous weekends. On average, the group that mentioned Pokemon Go was walking 62.5 percent more than usual.
Users of Under Armour's MyFitnessPal log workouts, like walking, running or biking. In recent days, they've started entering "Pokemon Go" as a workout, says Rebecca Silliman, director of communications with Under Armour Connected Fitness.
"Generally they burn about 250 to 300 calories a pop," she said.
Mike Caldwell, co-founder of Pacer, an activity tracker app users download to their phone, says his team looked at Pacer users younger than 30 and saw a 5 percent to 10 percent increase in daily steps, overall, since the launch, compared with the week before.
"Now, I can't say with the data that we have that this increase is due to Pokemon Go," Caldwell said. "But if we just suppose for a moment that it were, that's a remarkable change over an entire population."
ActiveStyle on 07/25/2016