It seems like the entire world became obsessed with Pokemon overnight. All of a sudden my newsfeeds on every form of social media were clogged with posts about people talking about the Pokemon they’d been catching. Having absolutely no idea what was going on (and a very faint idea of what a Pokemon even was and how one would go about catching one), I withheld judgment.

Finally, after asking multiple people to explain not only the game, but the hype surrounding it, I began to piece together an explanation. It’s really fairly simple. An app called Pokemon Go uses your phone’s GPS technology to locate small creatures (Pokemon). All you have to do is catch them. Of course, there’s more to the game, but the essence of it seems to be travelling around and catching Pokemon. The catch is that you have to be within a certain range of the creature to catch it, making it impossible to play the game from the comfort of your own home.

In a fashion similar to geocaching, players walk around following the GPS signals until they can locate the Pokemon, at which point they attempt to catch it. The game has already been the product of a decent amount of backlash from people complaining about the millennial generation being attached at the hip to their cell phones and video games, but the people complaining are arguably missing the entire point. Yes, Pokemon Go relies on a cell phone to function. However, Pokemon Go is getting people outside. Pokemon Go is getting people active. Pokemon Go is providing people with the opportunities for fresh air, exercise, and even social interaction that they would miss if they elected to remain inside playing video games instead.

Initially, the stories were simply about individuals walking more than usual on their search for Pokemon. Most notable was a story about a man who walked ten miles in one day on his hunt. While this distance may not seem to be that long to some, it’s an incredible feat for those who don’t exercise regularly. The stories soon got wilder and weirder, however. People have begun to hike up mountains simply to catch the Pokemon located at the top or along the way, and some players even kayaked into the middle of a lake because there was a Pokemon located there. One player I talked to even mentioned that he finally understands why bicycles are so valuable, as they enable him to travel faster and further when he goes out Pokemon hunting.

As juvenile as this may seem to some, the fact that a video game is able to get individuals this physically active is ground-breaking. Although Nintendo made a previous attempt to increase physical activity with their Wii console, people could only be so active when they were still required to stand in front of their television. Now, however, Pokemon Go is taking players further and further each day, forcing them to explore new territory on foot, bike, or even kayak in order to, as players say, “catch ‘em all”.

It remains to be seen whether this new fad will fizzle out or continue on strong, and the game has still only been released in a handful of countries, but it will be interesting to see what kind of dramatic improvement Pokemon Go might have on the lifestyles of many sedentary millennials.