Businesses started using this game to grow profits while people enjoy spending time outside.
It’s time for me to tell you that I started playing this game recently. This period is when I like morning jogs. I said, “why not”?
Since I started playing it, I regularly read stuff like Pokémon Go is good for your system, the game is not good for you, the game is taking over your life, and it’s a bad thing…
I felt like I’m going deep into some mental state without a way out.
The last thing that I’ve read is a statement from a neuroscientist. He says that Pokémon Go is messing with your brain.
It attacks certain neuro groups that make you experience pleasure and positive reinforcement. They stand guilty behind the addiction of drugs and junk food.
That’s why players quit their jobs, break into homes trying to catch rare Pokémons, and we see people hit by a car or falling off cliffs.
Elan Barenholtz, an associate professor in the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences at Florida Atlantic University, admits that these virtual reality games are creating a dangerous path by offering a rewarding alternative to reality.
“It’s doing something really that drugs do in that it’s artificially stimulating your reward centers. We’re messing around with giving ourselves stimulants and feedback that we’ve never encountered before. And just like drugs, you never know where this is going to go.”
We’ve seen opinions like this earlier. In 1998, a study found that playing video games release levels of striatal dopamine.
It’s the right chemical that triggers the reward system. It’s often connected to the chemicals found in different kinds of drugs.
Another study from 2011 says that the brain of a 14-year-old video gamer looks similar to those who use drugs.
However, the last research shows how your brain reacts to video games when you play them in your room in front of the TV.
Barenholtz says that the old-school Play Station or X-Box games, in which you are aware that the behavior you see on the TV is not real, your mind measure the awards like “fake.”
On the other hand, playing Pokémon Go is different. Here is how:
“When you’re going out and running around in an environment, and you’re getting the video game feedback at the same time, you’re now recruiting a much richer representation, your brain is now falling for it in a much deeper way, even though you know cognitively it’s fake. Just like illusions, you know they’re wrong, but there’s a good chunk of your brain that buys them. I think you’re going to buy them more deeply now, so that should make the reward that much more compelling and that much more addictive.” – Barenholtz explains.
I find this speculative at this point. But, to understand the whole purpose of Pokémon Go you need to start playing it and see how interactive this game is.
The Neuroscientist adds:
“It’s like when you watch a movie, you know it’s fake and if somebody’s telling a story you know it’s made up, but here you’re engaging your whole body, and you’re moving around, and it’s no longer something you have to imagine or make up. “It’s almost real life. It’s much closer to reality.”
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