IT’S a scary reality when people at Tamworth’s Bicentennial Park are more acquainted with Pokemon than picnic rugs.
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But a new craze sweeping the city – and the entire country – is seeing everyone from school children to their parents hunting for their next Pokemon catch using a new app known as Pokemon Go.
The augmented-reality game encourages users to wander around streets using your phone GPS to catch the cyber monsters known as Pokemon.
Your live camera captures the scene around you and Pokemon jump into your phone screen as you look at the world in front of you.
Though you’d be forgiven for not knowing about the ground-breaking craze because it hit record popularity in just two days, you’d be hard pressed to find a local who has not come across a walking mobile phone zombie in recent days.
Yesterday, The Leader paid a visit to the city’s most popular park to get to the bottom of it all.
Alarmingly, dozens of locals and visitors were out and about, with eyes transfixed to their phones, on the hunt for their next big catch.
Even in the streets, it seems some are more interested in “catching ‘em all” than looking up to cross a road.
It is a craze like few others we have seen before and only adds weight to the much-debated issue of screen time.
Sure, Pokemon Go proponents can argue the craze is encouraging people to get outside and be active, or allowing them to live out their favourite childhood game, or even encouraging families to bond as they chase these computerised animals together.
But the reality is, more and more people would rather stare at a screen instead of the real world.
Not only is it a damn shame that extensive screen time can stifle the growth of imagination, but phone addiction is more dangerous than many of us probably think.
In fact, so bad is the prevalence of pedestrians distracted by mobile phones that the NSW government launched in May an Australian-first trial to help mobile phone zombies make smarter choices on the road, in the wake of 29 pedestrian deaths this year alone.
At a time when toddlers can play on a tablet more comfortably than they can turn the page of a book, it begs questions over the future of how our children play games.
Some can only imagine what the future holds.