Momo Challenge is a HOAX

BY SHREYA 7P

Parents have been incredibly frightened for their children, in fact absolutely terrified by the Momo Challenge. Many national newspapers covered this story and it was shared hundreds of thousands times on Facebook over a short 24 hour period. However, it has transpired that all of those rumours started as a result of ‘fake news’.

The Momo Challenge initially started to spread by parents and adults via social media. It was believed that a creepy looking creature popped up on the screen while children were watching videos, such as Peppa Pig, on YouTube. This creature has a distorted face, big bulging eyes and black hair. The image itself is genuinely terrifying to look at, especially for young children. Adults believed that this creature was telling their children to harm their family and themselves. A student in year 7 said, “I was horrified when knowing that false news spreads so easily.”

It is not the first time the Momo Challenge has been in the news. In August 2018, the Daily Mirror had an article about a boy’s apparent suicide as a result of the Momo Challenge. It has to be asked, why has the Momo Challenge resurfaced? It is a coincidence that the government are looking to try and put stricter controls on social media and the Internet?

As a school community it makes people feel scared as this kind of thing normally affects children. We should learn many things from this experience. We should not easily believe in things like this and research it before we start to share information so that we don’t become the distributers of fake news.

It is interesting to note that the NSPCC received more phone calls about the Momo Challenge from media outlets than concerned parents. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport recently published a report titled ‘disinformation and fake news’ in which they recommend that digital literacy should be “a fourth pillar of education alongside reading, writing and maths”. Perhaps adults also need to be better educated so that they too are more media literate. If we all have a better understanding about fake news then we’d be less likely to fall into the trap of believing fake news stories.

In year 9 media studies students are taught a unit dedicated to media literacy and fake news.