Data from 60,000 pedometer wearers indicate that the French have been walking more since the launch of the Pokémon hunting application.
We can ironic as much as we want, the game Pokémon Go is indeed akin to physical activity – in any case, it encourages it. In fact, hunters are also good walkers; this is evidenced by the performances recorded by wearers of connected pedometers from the Withings brand, which produces a study on the Pokémon Go effect.
The authors compared the average number of steps per day during the week of July 25-31, 2016 with that of the same period in 2015. In all, anonymized and aggregated data from a sample of 60,000 activity tracker users Withings in France, aged 15 to 50, were collected.
5 km per week
“The so-called “Y” generation (15 to 34 years old) clearly walked more than last year, write the authors of the study. The most pronounced increase is observed for the youngest, aged 15 to 24, who walked an average of 956 more steps per day.
Over a week, this increase represents about five additional kilometers, the authors calculated. “Just what it takes to hatch a Pokémon egg!” In detail, people aged 25 to 34 walked 342 steps more per day; the 35-50 year olds, for their part, display 233 additional steps on the counter.
“This more modest increase for the last group could be linked to the fact that people in this group did not grow up with Pokémon (created in 1996, editor’s note)”, advances the study.
The share of Pokémon hunters among pedometer wearers is unknown; this is the main limitation of this study. However, judging by the devastating success of the application, there are many of them in the sample.
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