Someone Just Went Temporarily Blind Due to Pokémon GO

The number of bad news spawning (get it? Spawning) from Pokémon GO keeps on increasing: from traffic accidents to even one fellow who nearly let her kid drown due to her Pokémon GO addiction.

Here’s one more for the list: Someone just went temporarily blind due to Pokémon GO.

A 31-year-old lady in New Taipei City, Taiwan, had visited the local hospital after she realized she could not see from her right eye. It turned out that she had macular degeneration, a condition that typically occurs in older people, in in particular people above 50 years old.

While age plays a big role in the condition, there are some environmental influences that could potentially contribute to this, namely smoking, high-blood pressure, atherosclerosis, high cholesterol, obesity, high fat intake and this: exposure to sunlight.

The lady, who is pregnant, might or might not already have macular degeneration, but overplaying Pokémon GO made her condition even worst. While we can’t deny that there’s a possibility that Pokémon GO didn’t contribute directly to her condition, it does play a part. After all, we’ve yet to come across people going blind (directly or indirectly) from, say, Facebook, right?

Just like Singapore, people in Taiwan are obsessed with the game. According to a research, one in three people in Taiwan plays Pokémon GO—that’s a lot of players.

In addition, employees there spend 1.3 hour per day in the office catching Pokémon. And not to mention the video that has gone so viral that people associated it with the end of the world.

Here’s the thing: maybe the declining number of Pokémon GO players is a good thing after all.

Featured Image: Manintino / Shutterstock.com