As teachers, our summer break is precious time needed to recover and recharge for another school year. For those of you who think we don’t need this break, I invite you to manage teenage students all day for a 180-plus day tour and let me know if you don’t need a vacation afterward. But I digress. One of the unwritten rules of summer break for teachers: Do not remind yourself or fellow teachers that summer is coming to an end.
Aside from this year marking my second full year as a teacher, the start of this new school year for me will be spent listening to my students rant and rave about Pokémon Go. Released in early July, the app is free to play and allows players to “interact” with the real world by using their phones (iOS and Android devices) to play the game in a physical space. It’s essentially a massive game of capture the flag.
I’ll be honest, initially I thought it would only be popular among younger teens and children. But this app, a groundbreaker in the gaming world, has been taking the damn world by storm. It has successfully brought Pokémon back to the forefront of the gaming world. And here I thought people got over the Pokémon madness after my sixth grade year.
Now sports fans, you might be asking yourselves why I am writing about a gaming app in a sports column. I’ll admit it’s a stretch, but I’m doing it for a few reasons:
1. I find the inspiration behind creating this game completely stupid (it has to do partly with “exercise”).
2. I have never and will never understand the fascination with Pokémon.
3. It’s my Benchwarming duty to go against the grain and inevitably piss people off for my seemingly “old-school” opinions.
To begin, the obesity epidemic in America”particularly among young children”is a startling trend that has been at the forefront of national health concerns for the last decade. More children are facing health issues at a younger age while even more are being diagnosed with diabetes. While nutritional standards and lapses in parenting have not helped decrease obesity in children, neither has the advent of technology and the corresponding obsession with video games.
Gaming consoles and systems first debuted when I was a young child. From the primitive Nintendo to the newer PlayStation, I have watched gaming technology evolve. When it came to gaming and most things technology, my parents were selective and strict. While it may have been annoying as a child, I have thanked them repeatedly as an adult for being that way. My sister and I had limited television and computer time as kids; I didn’t have a smartphone until I bought one myself (after college, mind you). Then one fine Christmas morning when I was 13 years old, my sister and I were gifted our first ever Xbox, along with two racing games, and a Star Wars game. We were halfway convinced our parents had been replaced by aliens.
Now, you might think we would’ve become completely immersed in our new gaming system”and we were, for all of three hours that first day. For my sister and I, real playtime meant going outside and getting dirty and into trouble all over our acre of property. Our Xbox, so exciting at first, quickly became a source of entertainment on rainy days and periodically over our winter breaks from school. To this day, it continues to gather dust.
I think back on all those days spent outside with fondness, because when I look at my students I worry that the days of children running around outside are behind us with the continued evolution of technology. Call me too nostalgic or unrealistic, but I find it quite upsetting that kids can’t exercise, play, or entertain themselves outside without a screen attached to their hands.
I know I’m beating the same old dead horse about days of yore when kids wouldn’t come inside until the street lights went out, but just hear me out. We live in a world where kids are so unhealthily addicted to video games that their only motivation to go outside is now being fed through Pokémon Go. So now they can get skin cancer while they play their video games outside. Wonderful.
The new game itself is described as allowing interaction between the virtual gaming world and reality. But where is the interaction between the game and the real world? How is it interaction when you walk around with your eyes glued to your screen? Because you have to look up every now and then and make sure you’re on the right street to find stupid Pikachu? Give me a break.
To be fair, people and children are getting outside. They are indeed getting some kind of exercise running around parks at nighttime like idiots on a wild goose chase”I’ve seen it on Snapchat with my own friends. But is it too much to ask people to become motivated to be active and outside without a screen?
Being outside with a screen pretty much defeats the social aspect entirely, Pokémon Go or not. Not to mention you think all these people running around city streets would be a cause for safety concern. And in today’s crazy gun-obsessed world I am just waiting for the moment people fight over this game and someone ends up shot. Yes, I’m being cynical, but with things like Pokémon Go and the continued ignorance over guns and the archaic Second Amendment, I don’t have enough faith left in humanity sometimes to be anything but cynical. I’m a teacher so my students can remind me to have hope and faith in them.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there is no greater benefit for children and adults alike than shutting down your screen and going outdoors. Be active without a screen to keep you company. Kids may be surprised to learn there is an imagination in their heads that offers more excitement than any game; creativity and an active body are greater than catching any Pokémon.
But what do I know? I’m just a Benchwarmer, and I’m going outside.
To contact The Benchwarmer, send comments to Editor Shelly Cone at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jul 28 – Aug 4, 2016.