Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
TWISTED MOMO WEB CRAZE URGING KIDS OF 5 TO SELF-HARM Sick character sneaked into kids’ videos
A SICK online “suicide game” featuring a creepy woman is targeting toddlers by infiltrating innocent Youtube videos such as Peppa Pig, parents warned yesterday.
The Momo challenge, which has been linked to child deaths, encourages children as young as five to harm themselves or others, and even to take their own lives.
The character – a terrifying doll with bulging black-ringed eyes, straggly hair and an evil grin – is inserted by hackers into popular online children’s videos and hit games such as Roblox and Fortnite.
She then orders children to follow her instructions, threatening that bad things will happen to their friends and family if they do not comply.
Her dangerous “dares” reportedly include swallowing paracetamol tablets and turning the gas oven on after their parents are asleep.
Youngsters are threatened into contacting a Whatsapp number, before being hounded with violent orders, including inciting them to self-harm and to kill themselves.
The craze has been linked to several suicides, including a 12-year-old girl in Argentina and a boy aged nine in Brazil. Now it has reached the UK. Mum-of-three Sophie Giblin, of Withernsea, East Yorks, believes the character terrified her five-year-old son Harry.
Sophie, 25, said: “For the past few weeks, he has been terrified to leave my side. It got so bad he wouldn’t let go of the car door to go to school, sobbing… I’d asked him if he’d heard of Momo, but he always said no.
“Then he started telling me what she looked like. When I asked how he knew that if he’d never heard of her, he just burst into tears and was terrified.
“He said Momo turned up in the middle of the videos he watches, Peppa Pig and people playing Minecraft and Roblox.
“He told me it was a secret and that she’d told him she would hurt his family if he told us.”
Kirbileigh Hecker, of Hartlepool, Co Durham, told how she had caught her daughter Layla searching for her paracetamol tablets, saying Momo had told her if she didn’t swallow 40, she would kill her parents. She said tearful Layla told her Momo, “kills people, mums and dads”.
Youtube said: “We appreciate people drawing problematic content to our attention and make it possible for anyone to flag a video… any videos that don’t belong in the app [Youtube Kids] are removed.”
Whatsapp was contacted for comment.
DISTRESSED MUM