Momo challenge: Why it isn’t real and you don’t need to worry BBC Newsround

The Momo challenge is hardly the first suspected craze to seize on the anxieties of adults — just look to past panic over supposedly dangerous teen trends that ended up being an overblown internet hoax. And as is the case for many spurts of viral panic, the Momo challenge has been elevated into a global phenomenon, not because of the stories shared by victims themselves but by the worried adults trying to protect them. Like many an internet phenomenon, Momo was born on Reddit – specifically, on the ‘creepy’ sub-reddit. A reddit user posted the above image – a woman with enormous eyes and a giant, beak-like mouth – on the website.

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La Republica suggested that the series of photos (or challenges) that Momo sends may actually be steps toward committing suicide, such as sending a photo of someone tying a sheet around their neck. Fact-checking website Snopes suggested the story was “far more hype or hoax than reality”, but warned the images could still cause distress to children. The image and the story of children harming themselves or their families is, of course, shocking. However, as ParentZone recently highlighted, the number of reported cases of children harming themselves because of the game is extremely low. Even those cases that are linked in the media, of teenagers killing themselves in Asia and South America, are not suggesting the game was the direct cause.

But more often than not, seemingly innocuous internet jokes and memes are being taken out of context or dubbed as dangerous trends regardless of whether they actually exist. As the Atlantic’s Taylor Lorenz pointed out this week, there’s a host of so-called “deadly teen crazes” that have circulated widely, only to later be debunked. But the hysteria likely wouldn’t have reached its current level of viral infamy had it not been for Slender Man. In the summer of 2014, two 12-year-olds lured a fellow sixth-grader into the woods and stabbed her 19 times, allegedly in hopes of conjuring a dark, mythical being known as the Slender Man. The violent attack became a cultural touchstone defining the power of internet culture in its ability to warp belief systems and reality.

YouTube stepped in, confirming there was no evidence, especially after Kim Kardashian warned her millions of followers in February 2019 about Momo, urging the company to remove Momo Challenge videos from their site. On July 11, YouTuber ReignBot uploaded a video of the photos called “Exploring the Momo Situation.” This video talked about the urban legend and the WhatsApp phone number. ReignBot said it’s difficult to tie Momo down to one specific WhatsApp user, and people trying to contact connected numbers are unlikely to get a response. If they do, they’ll receive insults and disturbing images, and implications that the user knows their personal information.

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Many of these videos actually fail to make contact with Momo, and some are intentional fakes. Warnings about the dangers of Momo videos in the U.S. were heavily promoted on Facebook this week, but not just by trolls and other traditional disinformation agents. Of course, anyone is able to access the image online, add it to their WhatsApp, and add whoever they like. It means there are as many different ways of using the image as there are people doing it. For kids (and parents) that don’t have that context, Momo’s threat is in her anonymity — she could be anyone. It is this approach that will best protect kids when using the Internet, and that encompasses passing crazes like Momo, and whatever her successor will be.

David Mikkelson, founder of popular debunking site Snopes.com, described claims of Momo being a dangerous “global phenomenon” as “fear-driven exaggeration lacking in supportive evidence” in a statement issued to CNN. Children are supposedly encouraged to save the character as a contact and are then asked to carry out challenges, as well as being told not to tell other members of their family. Rather than warning children about specific dangers such as Momo, parents and professionals can better help children by teaching them good practices online. Online chain letters accelerate the spread of these messages while also enabling ongoing back and forth communication from the sender by moving from letters to direct messaging. They also lower the effort required to take part, from printing, addressing and posting a letter to clicking a number to send a Whatsapp or text.

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Though the actual origins of the Momo Challenge itself are unclear, it reportedly made its rounds in the Spanish-speaking world first, with Mexican authorities claiming that the trend stemmed from a Facebook group. But per Google trends, the Momo challenge didn’t really pick up steam in the English-speaking world until YouTuber ReignBot made a video devoted to unpacking the phenomenon in July 2018. Failure to complete the tasks apparently would result in their personal information being leaked or threats of violence. The Momo challenge has similar trappings as the “Blue Whale challenge,” which was another supposed online suicide game with a series of tasks spread out over 50 days. That internet “game” was ultimately found to be bogus, along with several other waves of panic, like those that falsely suggested hordes of kids were eating Tide Pods or snorting condoms.

• In fact, the photo is simplhy a sculpture of a half-woman/half-bird, as you can see in the other photos in this story.
• If a person used the messenger app WhatsApp to contact these numbers, they would get a reply from a user named Momo who used a photo of the Mother Bird statue as their profile picture.
• The face of it is a joke but the concept is horrendous.Would hate for this to happen to any of my friend’s and family.Until YouTube can 100% guarantee this is not a thing, there will be no more YouTube in this house.
• There have also been reports of trolls editing kid-friendly YouTube videos to include images of Momo, as well as instructions encouraging them to self-harm.

Two other Instagram users (@ma_kimodo_shi and @j_s_rock) also posted photos of the sculpture on that icm capital trade forex cfds and commodities day. Following a flurry of scare stories, some schools have warned parents about the “momo challenge” – but fact-checkers say it is a hoax. A similar phenomenon can be seen on Instagram, where users co-opt the virality of hashtags like #momochallenge in an attempt to boost their content, even if the post does not feature Momo. In reality, videos on YouTube that claim to feature Momo frequently don’t feature Momo at all. Some claim to show Momo in the middle but simply promote rap songs, vlogs or other content not aimed at children. The best tactic is not to play into the fear and panic surrounding what is largely a suburban (albeit global) myth.

They attracted hundreds of thousands of shares and resulted in news stories reporting the tale. As I expand below, evidence of direct harm caused by the game is yet to be found. Rather than sharing warnings that perpetuate and mythologize the story, a better focus is good positive advice for children, set xcellence-it junior asp net mvc developer smartrecruiters software development up technology appropriately and take an interest in their online interactions.

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But while the risk of seeing disturbing content on social media is all too real, the idea of a mysterious cabal of tech-savvy sociopaths communicating with kids via WhatsApp and urging them to kill themselves is too ludicrous to maintain an air of plausibility. “If you think about it, adults have a hard time getting teens to clean up their rooms, much less get kids to perform a series of increasingly bizarre tasks for 50 days consecutively,” says Radford. According to lore, the Momo challenge is a viral game shared on messaging services like WhatsApp that goads young children into violence or even suicide. Images of the devilish bird-lady supposedly pop up with creepy messages and commands that are said to escalate to extreme violence and horror. Shortly after the Momo Challenge legend started gaining steam online, an Argentinian girl committed suicide in July 2018.

Funke called Momo’s ascendence “a feedback loop, in a way,” believing it’s possible the proliferation of the warnings could will a hoax into reality. Viral posts about Momo, at times featuring less reliable evidence, took off just days later. On Tuesday, bitcoin miner for sale a Twitter user named BreeDaAuraGod_ shared a viral Facebook post about the dangers of Momo. Stories warning of Momo’s imminent danger were spreading fast across India the week of Aug.12, some using the meme’s scare tactics to make fun of public figures in viral tweets. According to a Google Trends analysis, searches for Momo spiked in Bolivia and Argentina to an all-time high the week of July 15.