Parents Must Know About Momo, a Dangerous New Social Media Challenge

I’m sure most parents are unfortunately very familiar with the increase in recent years of dangerous, viral social media challenges. Last year famous and scary challenge, The Blue Whale Challenge, encouraged kids to follow a set of dares that a “group administrator” would send them- most of the challenges include self-harm and demonstrations of the kid’s commitment to obeying the administrator.  

Now, there is a new challenge through the messaging app, WhatsApp. This challenge, called Momo, is a number which kids message and start to receive violent images and messages from a disturbing character “Momo”. The messages include attempts at blackmail, claiming that the person behind “Momo” has information on the kids (obviously that is not true).

Since WhatsApp is an anonymous and strongly encrypted messaging app, there is no way for police forces to investigate further into this, ultimately leaving the solution to this problem up to awareness. Make sure to warn your children of the dangers of participating in challenges like this one and be very clear not to give any information to the person acting as “Momo”, which could lead to real blackmail or even more personal attempts at contacting your child.