Pokémon Go wants to be the exercise app that actually works

Pokémon Go is an augmented reality game. It’s also a huge health fad right now.

Since launching last week, the app has exploded in popularity. Free to download on your iPhone or Android, it uses location data from mobile phones to help users chase fictional Pokémon characters around their environs, which are displayed back on their phones. In one week, the app has already become so popular that it’s rivaling Twitter in terms of the volume of daily active users, Vox’s German Lopez writes in his indispensable Pokémon Go explainer.

But there’s another interesting outcome of the game’s rise: It seems to be getting people moving. Check out these tweets from self-reported users:

Unlike most games, which engage only your thumbs, Pokémon Go requires you to walk, run, and even jump — all great forms of exercise. Gizmodo noted that this may even be driving a “pandemic” of sore legs, since so many users have complained about pain from their Pokémon “workouts.”

And that’s just what the game’s makers hoped for, according to a Business Insider interview with Pokémon Go CEO John Hanke:

A lot of fitness apps come with a lot of “baggage” that end up making you feel like “a failed Olympic athlete” when you’re just trying to get fit, Hanke says. “Pokémon Go” is designed to get you up and moving by promising you Pokémon as rewards, rather than placing pressure on you.How much more active are users? So far, all we have are these anecdotes. But there is some preliminary data from the Cardiogram for Apple Watch and the fitness tracking company Jawbone that suggests an uptick in physical activity among users since the launch of the game.

Some rapturous fans are even calling Pokémon a fix for the obesity crisis:

Now, let’s be clear: The game may encourage physical activity, and we certainly could use more of it. But it’s an unlikely fix for the obesity epidemic, given that low physical activity is not the main driver of it.

And this surge in use may be temporary — just as Pokémon’s first burst of popularity was in the 1990s. So there’s no reason to assume all this animated creature chasing will lead to the kind of real behavior change that has a lasting impact on health.

What’s more, reviews of the evidence on video games designed to get people active and improve health reveal a mixed picture of their effectiveness. The data we have on mobile apps and devices to track and encourage exercise, though, may be instructive: It suggests they only lead to temporary changes among most users, which eventually fade away.

Maybe Pokémon Go will be different. Maybe, as Vox’s Ezra Klein writes, augmented reality technology will advance quickly, more and more people will latch on, and instead of sitting to play the game, they’ll run and walk.

Or maybe it’ll be a passing health fad, like all the others.

Update: The original version of this story suggested the potential health benefits of Pokémon Go were an unintended effect. We’ve since learned that the Pokémon Go makers designed the app with exercise as an explicit goal, according to Business Insider and Time.