I mean, the people who have adopted Pokemon Go are now connecting with each other outside in their cities' public spaces, often reconnecting with old friends to go out together. I'm not sure this was intentional on the app designers' part (maybe "go outside" was, but the residual social effects of getting so popular so fast in combination with "go outside" probably wasn't so well-appreciated, since they deployed v. 1.0 as a mostly-egocentric game).

There is the definite potential for a device to change the way we hide behind devices into an opportunity to meet people and connect.

Right but don't criticize devices if your solution is to use a device?

When all you have is a hammer..