Pokemon Go Could Add 2.83 Million Years To Users' Lives, Says Study (cnn.com) 156
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNNMoney: A new study from Microsoft Research found that the most interested Pokemon Go players took 26% more steps than before using the app. The largest behavior changes were seen among sedentary users. No matter their gender, age, weight or lifestyle, Pokemon Go users began to move more -- taking an extra 194 steps a day once they started using the app. (That's the equivalent of walking roughly one tenth of a mile.) The researchers estimate that Pokemon Go has added 144 billion steps to U.S. physical activity. That's 143 roundtrips to the moon. The study was published online this month in the Cornell Library University. Since activity reduces mortality risks, the researchers estimated that Pokemon Go could add 2.83 million years to the life expectancy of an assumed 25 million U.S. users. Based off research that showed walking reduces mortality, the researchers calculated that Pokemon Go users who continued to walk an extra 1,000 steps a day would enjoy 41.4 days of additional life expectancy. The Microsoft scientists examined data shared by 31,793 users of Microsoft Band, a wearable device, and Bing, the company's search engine. They compared the movement data from the wearables with users' web search queries. Pokemon Go players were identified by web searches that indicated they were playing the game. The Microsoft team also looked at four of the most popular health apps on Apple and Android devices. They found these apps had little impact on a person's behavior. The activity levels of Pokemon Go users changed far more.
Misleading title (Score:1)
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It's right there in the summary:
could add 2.83 million years to the life expectancy of an assumed 25 million U.S. users
Which gives a bit more than 0.1 years per user. Further down
would enjoy 41.4 days of additional life expectancy.
41.4 days is a bit more than 0.1 x 365, so the two figures matched, as expected.
I suppose reading the summary is just too onerous for /. posters.
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Extrapolating further, that's 2.83 million person-years worth of food and energy we have to come up with.
Thanks, Obama!
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But also, math is hard!
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Pokemon Go could add 2.83 million years to the life expectancy of an assumed 25 million U.S. users
So about a month. Which they would only [have] wasted playing Pokemon Go.
Fake GPS (Score:1)
Did the study also consider that people might be using a fake positioning system to just virtually walk around?
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That will result in spending your extra 40 days in a virtual reality.
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It used fitness trackers (which surely skews the results towards those bothered enough to get one of those things), not Pokemon Go, for step counts.
Most older people seem to play Pokemon Go in the pub, so if it wasn't for the fact they would be in a pub already, it surely is decreasing their life expectancy! :D
Ok, we've added. Now let's subtract. (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's subtract all the people who get shot, mauled or otherwise physically harmed for hunting Pokemon where they shouldn't, along with those smart individuals who become victims of accidents because they wanted to hunt some Pokemon where no smart human would willingly go (like, say, the middle of a busy interstate). How many years older do we then get?
Or is that ok because it only weeds out the ... let's say less viable individuals?
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Let's subtract all the people who get shot, mauled or otherwise physically harmed for hunting Pokemon where they shouldn't, along with those smart individuals who become victims of accidents because they wanted to hunt some Pokemon where no smart human would willingly go (like, say, the middle of a busy interstate). How many years older do we then get?
Or is that ok because it only weeds out the ... let's say less viable individuals?
It would probably add up to no more than a few thousand years of life lost, so overall still a very large net positive gain.
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I agree. But I guess for different reasons...
More math I don't quite get (Score:2)
The summary states, "Go users ... (take) an extra 194 steps a day...".
It goes on to state that the Microsoft Research researchers, "calculated that Pokemon Go users who continued to walk an extra 1,000 steps a day would enjoy 41.4 days of additional life expectancy."
Um, those both may be true, but how does +194 steps equate to +1000 steps? Does the added life expectancy scale linearly (each user living an extra 8.03 days on average)? And, as others have noted, shouldn't they subtract the time spent playing
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I was actually thinking about this last night, and I thought that they could may be add a feature to a game like Pokemon Go that might help save a few of those lives... or at least improve their survivability odds a little bit if they aren't actually watching where they are walking.
The devices have a camera.... so couldn't they use the camera to watch the face of the user playing the game? Using eye-tracking software, they could probably ascertain if the user was looking at the screen at any given inst
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I imagine it could, the problem would be massive battery drain on an already battery chugging app.
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My first thought about this was, by helping people move about and live longer PG is actually contributing to environmental disaster.
Re:Ok, we've added. Now let's subtract. (Score:5, Insightful)
Games should be played for fun. Period. How long? Gee, I don't know, how long ago did Civilization 2 get launched?
Playing a game for ANY reason other than enjoyment is something I cannot really understand. Maybe that's why I rarely play MMOs for long. At some point, it stops being fun. It becomes a chore. Doing the same shit over and over to get a different number in front of your character portrait, so you can then go and participate in a group fight. Which is actually fun... for the first couple times. Then it again starts being a chore because you have to kill the same old monster a thousand times until whatever item you need to be "good enough" to enter another dungeon drops.
Sorry. Nope. I play games to enjoy myself. That may be for a few months. That may just be a few days. That may actually be a couple years. That may also be now again after I stopped for a few years. In the end, what matters is that games should be played for enjoyment of the act itself. Not some fake reward dangling like a carrot on a stick. The action itself should be rewarding. Then it's a good game.
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I play MMOs to immerse myself in a virtual world. To do stuff in said virtual world. For fun, mostly.
I've never understood the min-maxers. It's fun for the most part to see a character progress. But to spend time figuring out the exactly optimal method? Pah! Just be there. Do stuff.
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That's a great reason to play it. Interact with people, enjoy the company, teaming up to do stuff together that you can't really do alone, all great reasons.
I can even understand people who want to squeeze that last dps out and crunch numbers all day, to be honest, that was one of the reasons I played them. I crunched numbers and worked out better performance, though it was mostly for the other players because, well, actually playing was less interesting to me. That was just execution of what I designed and
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Play league of legends. It has a whole field of study behind it called Theroy crafting.
Just a quick point. Theorycraft applies to nearly every game. Not just League of Legends. And it's debatable whether WoW or Starcraft was the true origin of the term "theorycraft", but it definitely did not originate from League of Legends. The -craft suffix is a dead giveaway that it was a bastardized term from the player population of a Blizzard game. Plus, I remember discussing theorycraft back in vanilla WoW, which was before League of Legends even existed.
I do remember, in my experience at least,
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Theorycrafting existed a LONG time before WoW infested the MMO world. Its name comes more from the fact that crafting was a tedious, boring chore in most games that usually consisted of first calculating long lists of ingredients with different places to get them from, factoring in the time it takes to acquire them and eventually staring at the screen for a few minutes watching a progress bar move. Theorycrafting isn't that different from this fun pastime.
Once you start theorycrafting, you stop playing the
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At some point, it stops being fun. It becomes a chore.
I can't count how many games I've just up and dropped because of this reason. I'm pretty immune to the sunk-cost fallacy. Plus, since I never drop more than about $20-$30 into a game until I'm deep into it, it's never enough to care about. Everything from MMOs to single player RPGs, a fair number of community-based online text-based RPGs, etc. As I've gotten older, my patience for drudge-work has dropped off tremendously. My free time is nothing like it used to be, so if I spend more than 10-15 minutes not
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When I sink money in a game and don't get fun out of it, it's lost money. Every cent spent for fun is well spent. But I want my fun out of a game NOW. Not "when I spent enough time and money to get the ultraspecialawesome reward".
There's a rather simple game I enjoy playing, called Defiance. It's kinda mindless and repetitive as all fuck, but at the same time rather satisfying. It's easy to pick up, instantly understandable and the "leveling" you do is mostly for show. Basically it's mowing down rows after
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Let's say a poke go user spends an average of 1 hour/day for 3 years playing the game.
To say that, you'd first have to eliminate the 90% of players who get bored with it after the first two weeks.
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10% of 40 million is 4 million and a lot of users.
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non-entertaining
I think 20million people will disagree with that, ... in the USA alone. Or do you think people often do something that doesn't entertain them?
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no one is threatening your right to die a sad death at the hands of the NFL.
Do you just assume everyone you talk to on the internet is american? How's that working out for you?
Message from the future (Score:2)
Will I really? Well what do you suggest? Give up white bread? More rougage?
Great ... I'll let you know if it's true (Score:2)
Doubtful... (Score:4, Informative)
Did the researchers take into account how many Pokemon Go morons walked in front of cars, buses, and other vehicles while playing the game.
I personally saw a Pokemon Go idiot fall down a flight of stairs. She twisted her ankle and injured another innocent bystander.
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Do you need to take that into account? Idiots have been walking in front of cars staring at their mobiles long before pokemon go came out.
As a cannibal, (Score:2)
I prefer my vegans to be free range and grass fed organic.
Also, crappy summary and title.
I want to live longer... (Score:2)
... but I don't want to live 2.83 million years.
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3+ miles for me! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you divide the distance walked by the number of days since I started playing... which includes many days where I didn't play, and some where I played 8 hours. ;) :D
Lost 15 lb and slimmed down considerably!
Also met two really cute geek girls who were happy to let me play with their, ahem, pokemon!
Grab them by the pokemon I say!
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I think the phrase you're looking for is "grab them by the meowth".
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Focus only on the positive (Score:2)
Re:Focus only on the positive (Score:4, Interesting)
It might be easier to measure how many people died than it would be how many people's lives it saved. Sure we can point fingers at the guy who crashed his car playing pokemon whilst driving; but what about the guy who played pokemon instead of doing some other dumb teen thing. If pokemon kept him from joining a gang and getting shot, for example.
You can't really say "Pokémon" caused X more people to die, because we don't know the net affect. Extra people may have survived because of it.
Rooted device: No Pokémon Go for you! (Score:3, Interesting)
When Niantic decided that all players with rooted devices were no longer welcome, that pretty much ended the game for me. I was playing it with my spouse, and getting more exercise, but I shouldn't have to jump through yet more hoops to use this product. I'd do just as well reading a book while walking.
Some devices are rooted by default, some by choice. That alone is not an indicator of cheating.
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Because rooted devices making spoofing GPS infinitely easier.
1/10th of a mile? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, there may be a small health benefit to walking 1/10th of a mile. But, interest in the app will fade (HAS faded), and even that little bit of walking will subside. Getting and taking care of a dog will have a person doing a LOT more walking, AND will encourage social interaction... unlike Pokey-Go, which keeps users focused on their devices. I want to see some stats about the rate of Pokey-Go users becoming victims of crime... as the first rule of personal safety in public spaces is to maintain situational awareness, which these players are sorely missing.
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AND will encourage social interaction... unlike Pokey-Go
Well, I'm not so sure about that. I'm in a young little city, with lots of families and college kids. It's not uncommon to hear someone of any age under about 40 call out some pokemon name in the common poke-areas of the city, only to have a few other people of varying ages say, "Oooh, cool. Where?" I'm not sure that outside the game that college kids would be making any sort of contact with 10 year olds.
This weekend the wife and I went to people watch at what was rumored to be a ridiculous gatheri
Published by "Cornell Library University"? (Score:2)
Theoretically, yes ... Except ... (Score:2)
... the ones who could probably profit the most from the additional steps will most likely find it too tiring and will use GPS spoofing instead. ...
Also the study doesn't take into account the added risks to people not used to being in the actual world and moving about, which will as a result to the strange and dangerous surroundings fall prey to all those dangers present there. Like cars, bikes, air,
Already fitness aware (Score:2)
These are users who are already using and wearing Microsoft Band before they started playing Pokemon Go, so they were already worried about their fitness, and already had a device to monitor this
So playing Pokemon Go encourages people to walk more than a fitness monitoring band... and so these are useless ...?
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So playing Pokemon Go encourages people to walk more than a fitness monitoring band... and so these are useless ...?
Well you might notice that, after this research was announced, Microsoft quietly discontinued production of the Microsoft Band.
correlation != causation, part MMXLMSMXXIVVIII (Score:2)
Even if walking correlates with longer life,
more walking will not necessarily cause longer life.
So many negative comments (Score:1)
It's pretty sad the amount of negative, hateful and bitter comments from the users here. We get so many negative news nowadays and in the end all some people do is focus on the negative.
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When did we start measuring 1/10th miles as a physical achievement?
I suspect that we'd be surprised to how many people walking a few 10ths of a miles would be. When I got put on blood pressure medicine, the pharmacist asked if I could try walking and even just a few blocks would make a difference. I had to let her down by telling her I walk a mile and a half to work each way every day already. Yet, that there is attention to 1/10s of a mile or just a few blocks for ordinary walking, makes me think that it does matter for a significant slice of Americans.
That 'game' is still around? (Score:1)
Seems like a good deal, if accurate (Score:2)
I remember reading that sometimes exercise extends your life for the same period as doing the exercise. So in a sense yes, you could live longer but at the same time it's not really anymore time especially if you don't like exercising. So if playing Pokemon Go is fun and enjoyable for you and it extends your life by the same amount, that's pretty much a win win in my book. Note, I'm not a Pokemon Go player myself (don't want a dataplan on my cellphone) but I don't find Pokemon Go players on average annoy
Exercise for the sake of exercise is no fun. (Score:2)
To get people to exercise, don't tell them to do exercise. Give them a fun thing to do that happens to involve physical activity but don't call it exercise as that's a chore. Walking to catch a Pokemon is not a chore, it's fun - and that you have to walk and walk and walk to get from one to the other, well, that's just part of the game.
In other news (Score:3)
Depends on how they do it (Score:1)
One of the problems with things like Apple Watch and other apps is that, in scientific studies, we find the existence of specific goals actually decreases exercise.
People will only do as much as they need to achieve the goal.
That said, Pokemon Go (of which I am level 23 Valiant) has a non-goal measurement. You hatch 2k 5k 10k eggs by walking distances, getting lesser amounts if you take transit ("going too fast" counts less), harvesting Poke Stops and catching wild and placed Pokemon.
I've noticed a big upti
centralqq (Score:1)
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Re:Long life (Score:5, Funny)
I eat cruelty free meat. I take my animals to bed with me and smother them as they orgasm so they die at the moment of ultimate pleasure.
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Is all your grain hand-harvested? Then it's probably not "cruelty-free" - there's absolutely no way a hundred-acre field can be harvested without knowing that some mouse or snake has been run through the combine with your "cruelty-free" grains. Mowing a field of alfalfa can reduce the population of small rodents by up to 50%.
Stop deluding yourself.
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Food chain. (Score:2)
On the other hand, the meat we eat has had to be fed quite a lot of time until the animal reached a good enough size and got slaughtered.
Thar's why more grains per kilogram of meat-food, than the equivalent grain-based dinner for the same human.
So not eating meat does decrease the amount of such harvesting accident for mice and and snakes (simply by needing less grain to feed the human, rather than needing more grain to feed the animal, until you have enough of the animal to feed said human).
(I personally h
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Except that when those animals graze, there are zero deaths other than the rare unfortunate stomping from a cow. Not all beef comes from feed lots.
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Just good veggie cooking
That's great. You should come over and cook some sides for me. It will go well with that sweet tasty bloody murder that I enjoy eating while staring at photographs of the deceased's orphaned offspring.
Fake soy meat (Score:2)
This is not fake soy meat or whatever.
That's something I've never understood.
Tofu shaped like meat. It only taste like shit.
It's as if its only purpose is to be shaped like a sausage, so you don't feel outcast when you're on a diet but get invited to a BBQ, you still have a sausage-shaped object to put on the fire like everyone else.
To me this would sound just as mush stupid, if some butchers started to make redmeat shaped in the form of a red peperrni, so on the day you crave meat but were invited to a BBQ at some tree-hugin hippie vegans, you
Re:Long life (Score:5, Funny)
Important kitchen tip: A salad tastes a whole lot better if you, just before eating it, replace it with a steak.
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Important kitchen tip: A salad tastes a whole lot better if you, just before eating it, replace it with a steak.
I know this is odd, but sometimes I find a salad is a good thing to have next to a steak. Helps scrub out the ol' colon. Of course, you could just go to a chili festival...
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Of course, you could just go to a chili festival...
This, combined with your name, begs for a topical reply. But I just don't want to go there.
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This, combined with your name, begs for a topical reply. But I just don't want to go there.
Suffice to say that if a festival combines chili, salsa, and fruit salsa you might want to consider restricting yourself to just one or two of those categories, and if two, then not the first and third.
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Now I'm intrigued.
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Important kitchen tip: A salad tastes a whole lot better if you, just before eating it, replace it with a steak.
Of course it does.
Steak is concentrated salad.
Re:Long life (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll simply stay a second order vegetarian. I eat animals that are vegetarian.
Re:Long life (Score:4, Insightful)
Eat a vegetable-based diet and you'll life a lot longer.
That may not be true, but it will certainly seem that way.
Re:Long life (Score:5, Funny)
Doc, how can I live longer?
You drink?
Nope
Smoke?
Nope
Eat red meat?
Nope
Screw around?
Nope
Then why the hell do you want to live longer?
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It's a dialogue. How would you propose I should post it sensibly so I needn't add an explanation to the joke?
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Doc, how can I live longer?
You drink?
Nope
Smoke?
Nope
Eat red meat?
Nope
Screw around?
Nope
Then why the hell do you want to live longer?
Those are artificial highs -- temporary and often harmful. There are plenty of natural highs that are worth living for.
Such as?
Marijuana
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Re: Long life (Score:1)
How do you spot a vegan?
Don't worry. They'll tell you.
Re:Long life (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason Westerners eat animals is habit, taste or convenience, which is NOT reason enough to kill an animal.
The only reason why we eat animals is because we're omnivores. And eating too much meat is just as bad as eating too many vegetables. Actually eating too many vegetables is in many cases worse, since you lose out on essential things that will keep you alive that you can't get from plants. Though you can get some of them from eating mineral rich dirt.
If you really want to live a long life, you live a balanced life. If you want to die a short life in agony, you go to the extreme at either end. FYI: Heart disease has many factors(from environmental to genetic), the main cause of it in the west is we spend too much time on our asses.
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If you want to die a short life in agony, you go to the extreme at either end.
I worked with this girl who was, in my opinion, running herself to death. She has bad knees and feet anyway, and she was constantly training for marathons and 5Ks. She would come into work in pain so many times that I lost count. She is young, mid 30s, looks great, and is in great cardio-pulmonary shape, but her frame is breaking down. I asked her if it was worth being this "healthy" now and being a trainwreck when she is in her 60s. She said it was worth it.
I'll just try to, like you said, stick to a ba
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#536
I've thought long and hard about this vanity card. What I'm about to say is going to upset quite a few people. Some of them are my friends. Or perhaps, after reading this, my former friends. But I can't let that stop me from speaking my mind. It's time to say out loud what I know in my heart to be true. Vegetarians and vegans are mobility bigots. They believe that if a life form doesn't move, it's
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Cut out the inflammatory foods (grains), and you won't have to worry so much about clogging up your arteries. Without the cracks and crevices in your arteries, there's nowhere for the buildup to take hold.
Also, plant based protein is not the same as animal based, and, as carnivores, we need animal based protein.
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I think I take more than 194 steps in the morning from getting up to fixing breakfast ... but then, I don't live in the US ... ;)
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Well now, aren't you just a ray of sunshine.
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So do they get to split that 2.83 million between them? That would be 2830 years each.