gooblax
MVP
The first few months after Pokemon Go launched (July 2016), there were a lot of online articles about potential mental health benefits of playing Pokemon Go (PoGo).
For those who managed to miss all the hype about it last year, PoGo is a mobile game developed by Niantic based on the idea of being able to catch and battle with Pokemon (translation - pocket monsters) in the real world. The Pokemon franchise is huge, and a lot of the initial hype revolved around the nostalgia from earlier Pokemon games and the anime series.
Like almost all the games, the Pokemon Trainer starts out by choosing their 'starter pokemon' from a choice of three (or technically four) then goes out into the world to catch 'em all - complete their Pokedex (encyclopedia of all the pokemon they've seen/caught) - and train their pokemon to compete with others. The difference with Pokemon Go is that you physically have to go out and about to progress in the game. The app uses the GPS on your mobile device to track your physical location with respect to locations of interest (Pokestops and Gyms) and locations where pokemon pop up.
The main arguments for PoGo and mental health are that it encourages activity/exercise, and encourages socialisation.
On the exercise front, to make any sort of progress in the game you need to go outside.1 The majority of pokemon spawns are in areas of high mobile phone activity, and the majority of Pokestops and Gyms are in city areas. You could just drive between these points, and lots of people do. But early on Niantic implemented a 10.5 kph speed limit to be able to interact with any of the game features. The benefit of walking is staying below that limit and being able to interact with the game consistently. It also encourages going out and exploring new places; a lot of parks and reserves have been mapped as "nests" - areas where a particular pokemon will consistently spawn. If you're missing a certain pokemon from your 'dex or need a stronger one, a nest is a great spot to check out. The nests migrate every two weeks, so even if you don't need the nest pokemon one fortnight it's worth heading back to find out what the next one is. There's also the biomes and region exclusives, which encourage travelling out of your local area and even intercontinentally if you have the means to do so.
For socialisation, the idea is that people will get together when catching pokemon and battling Gyms. Early on in the game you pick a team - Valor (red), Mystic (blue), or Instinct (yellow) - this is your team for doing gym battles and putting your Pokemon into the gym to hold it. If a competing team has a high-level gym, you can take it down much quicker if you're in a group of other trainers rather than going solo. And you use far fewer resources (potions and revives) while trying to do it. Recently they changed the gameplay - gyms aren't so important now that Raids have been introduced. A Raid is a ridiculously overpowered pokemon that you can battle in a team, and subsequently try to catch a lower leveled version of that same pokemon. Some of the easier raids are solo-able, but you definitely need a duo, trio or bigger group for high level ones.
I have been playing since getting the app to work on my phone, which was about 3 days after game launch. By no means am I a dedicated player - I'm only level 30, my pokemon are pretty weak, I have only a rudimentary knowledge of type advantage, and haven't even maxed out my storage and bag limits. But I have played at least for a couple of minutes every day since then. They introduced a daily Pokestop spin bonus and pokemon catch bonus around November 2016, with a 7 day streak bonus on top. I have not missed my streak since that was implemented, even if it's meant dragging myself out in the rain at 11pm to my nearest stop which is only 1 block away. A year on from game launch I haven't seen any of the socialisation benefits and its impact on my exercising behaviour has definitely dropped off, but it does still get me out of the house once a day for that bonus.
Note:
1) Assuming you're not GPS-spoofing to pretend that you're in a location that you really aren't. This is against the Terms of Service and Niantic is working on banning/limiting accounts of people who do this.
For those who managed to miss all the hype about it last year, PoGo is a mobile game developed by Niantic based on the idea of being able to catch and battle with Pokemon (translation - pocket monsters) in the real world. The Pokemon franchise is huge, and a lot of the initial hype revolved around the nostalgia from earlier Pokemon games and the anime series.
Like almost all the games, the Pokemon Trainer starts out by choosing their 'starter pokemon' from a choice of three (or technically four) then goes out into the world to catch 'em all - complete their Pokedex (encyclopedia of all the pokemon they've seen/caught) - and train their pokemon to compete with others. The difference with Pokemon Go is that you physically have to go out and about to progress in the game. The app uses the GPS on your mobile device to track your physical location with respect to locations of interest (Pokestops and Gyms) and locations where pokemon pop up.
The main arguments for PoGo and mental health are that it encourages activity/exercise, and encourages socialisation.
On the exercise front, to make any sort of progress in the game you need to go outside.1 The majority of pokemon spawns are in areas of high mobile phone activity, and the majority of Pokestops and Gyms are in city areas. You could just drive between these points, and lots of people do. But early on Niantic implemented a 10.5 kph speed limit to be able to interact with any of the game features. The benefit of walking is staying below that limit and being able to interact with the game consistently. It also encourages going out and exploring new places; a lot of parks and reserves have been mapped as "nests" - areas where a particular pokemon will consistently spawn. If you're missing a certain pokemon from your 'dex or need a stronger one, a nest is a great spot to check out. The nests migrate every two weeks, so even if you don't need the nest pokemon one fortnight it's worth heading back to find out what the next one is. There's also the biomes and region exclusives, which encourage travelling out of your local area and even intercontinentally if you have the means to do so.
For socialisation, the idea is that people will get together when catching pokemon and battling Gyms. Early on in the game you pick a team - Valor (red), Mystic (blue), or Instinct (yellow) - this is your team for doing gym battles and putting your Pokemon into the gym to hold it. If a competing team has a high-level gym, you can take it down much quicker if you're in a group of other trainers rather than going solo. And you use far fewer resources (potions and revives) while trying to do it. Recently they changed the gameplay - gyms aren't so important now that Raids have been introduced. A Raid is a ridiculously overpowered pokemon that you can battle in a team, and subsequently try to catch a lower leveled version of that same pokemon. Some of the easier raids are solo-able, but you definitely need a duo, trio or bigger group for high level ones.
I have been playing since getting the app to work on my phone, which was about 3 days after game launch. By no means am I a dedicated player - I'm only level 30, my pokemon are pretty weak, I have only a rudimentary knowledge of type advantage, and haven't even maxed out my storage and bag limits. But I have played at least for a couple of minutes every day since then. They introduced a daily Pokestop spin bonus and pokemon catch bonus around November 2016, with a 7 day streak bonus on top. I have not missed my streak since that was implemented, even if it's meant dragging myself out in the rain at 11pm to my nearest stop which is only 1 block away. A year on from game launch I haven't seen any of the socialisation benefits and its impact on my exercising behaviour has definitely dropped off, but it does still get me out of the house once a day for that bonus.
Note:
1) Assuming you're not GPS-spoofing to pretend that you're in a location that you really aren't. This is against the Terms of Service and Niantic is working on banning/limiting accounts of people who do this.
I think it's cool that you met up with people, that's super scary for many (probably most) people, I think every time we terrify ourselves we have crossed a horizon and we gotta pat ourselves on the back. 
