“Momo” Challenge Tricks More Parents Than Children

By: Bailey A.

Copyright: The Guardian

A recent frenzy has occurred on social media revolving a creepy looking creature, known to the internet as “Momo”, who appeared in videos on Youtube Kids and allegedly threatened to murder the children if they did not follow Momo’s orders. Rumors went around that Momo told children to commit suicide, turn the oven on when their family was sleeping, and stab their parents in their sleep. All of this led to mass panic from parents and guardians all over social media, especially Facebook. It turns out, though, that Momo is a hoax.

There is no real proof that the Momo challenge is a real thing and there was no evidence of her showing up in any videos. It seems as though the Momo challenge ended up tricking the parents, not the children. People should not immediately believe everything they see on the internet, and shows how our society doesn’t need much evidence before they resort to panic. However, people nowadays are not only gullible, they believe what they want to believe. There’s been a lot of debate surrounding whether or not children should be able to access Youtube and other similar sites, especially some older parents on Facebook. So, of course when this hoax came out, the anti-Youtube parents were all over it, regardless of whether or not they had any proof that these videos featuring Momo actually existed.

On the other hand, since the challenge frenzy started, people have been creating videos featuring Momo, since this hoax gave them the idea to. Most of these are just mocking the idea of Momo and making fun of the gullible parents who fell for it, though, which is arguably well deserved. All things considered, people need to do more researching before they trust what they find online, especially what they read on Facebook.