I can only imagine how alarmed parents must've been as word of the Momo Challenge spread over the last few days. If you haven't heard of the Momo Challenge, to sum it up... a character named Momo would allegedly appear in videos aimed towards children that they would watch on You Tube, certain apps. or other popular video services directed at children. Momo would then give a challenge to children to hurt themselves, their parents, or others, and in some videos, Momo would go as far as to walk a child through suicide. Momo would tell the children that if the told any grown-ups, there would be consequences. Scary, right?
The news and worry of Momo has literally been WORLD WIDE, yet there have been no confirmed reports of children hurting themselves or others due to Momo, and nobody seems to have a screenshot of Momo popping up in the middle of a You Tube video or any popular apps. Snopes stepped in and basically debunked it all, as have many other sources. So, yeah... thankfully, Momo has been proven to be one big ol' internet hoax.
You Tube spoke out via Twitter, tweeting "We want to clear something up regarding the Momo Challenge: We’ve seen no recent evidence of videos promoting the Momo Challenge on YouTube. Videos encouraging harmful and dangerous challenges are against our policies."
"If you see videos including harmful or dangerous challenges on YouTube, we encourage you to flag them to us immediately. These challenges are clearly against our Community Guidelines. More info here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2802027?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&hl=en…"
And then just a bit ago, You Tube tweeted this.
And by the way, if you haven't seen the image that has been used as Momo, it's creepy. Here is a picture posted by our sister station in Los Angeles...