If your social media feeds have been anything like mine in the last couple of months, you’ll have seen friends, family, and celebrities sharing throwback pics from 2016 and waxing nostalgic about the era of the Snapchat dog filter, Stranger Things back when it was good, and Beyoncé’s Lemonade. But for me, 2016 will go down in history as the last time we ever felt truly connected as a society, and that’s all down to one little mobile app: Pokémon Go.
I grew up watching Pokémon, collecting Pokémon cards and playing Pokémon games on my Game Boy, and although I’d been several years clean from my obsession, it returned in full force with the release of Pokémon Go in July of 2016. I spent my commutes to and from work trying (almost always unsuccessfully) to spin PokéStops, battle gyms, and catch Pokémon. I started going for more walks in an effort to hatch the eggs I’d collected. My now-wife and I even chose date spots based on how densely they were populated with PokéStops and gyms.
And it wasn’t just me. For weeks, the news was filled with stories of the game’s popularity all over the world, with footage of crowds of all ages, races, religions, and genders coming together to raid gyms, catch rare Pokémon, and, somewhat unexpectedly, find community. In an era where our cities and neighbourhoods have become almost entirely devoid of “third spaces”, it was astonishing to see how Pokémon Go singlehandedly made one that spanned the globe.
Although the craze inevitably died down (the number of active users dropped from 232 million in 2016 to 65 million in 2017), I can’t help but reminisce on how united the world felt—even just for a month. If it came out today, I can't imagine an app like Pokémon Go being the balm for all of the issues we face in 2026, but the people (me) yearn for community, and it certainly couldn't hurt.
In many ways, 2016 wasn’t as rosy as we tend to look back on it. It was also the year we lost David Bowie, the year the UK left the EU, and the year the USA elected a reality TV star as president. If anything, for me, 2016 felt like the beginning of the end. But at least it will always be the year that gave us Pokémon Go.
Pokémon turns 30 today, and to celebrate, we have some telco-adjacent takes from the ageing millennials in WhistleOut's editorial team. Keep reading by clicking the links below!
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Georgia Dixon
Managing Editor - Singapore
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