There has been rising number of deaths worldwide and in India in the name of Blue Whale Challenge.
It calls for understanding the idea behind getting attracted to such life-threatening games.
What is the Blue Whale Challenge?
The game is a series of 50 challenges that must be completed over 50 days, with the last one being to kill oneself.
Each player is assigned a moderator to assign the task for the day.
The moderator takes the players through the process of executing the challenge, including the last task.
Reports have stated that players are not allowed to withdraw and that the moderators ensure compliance by the players.
The game is preying upon young, impressionable minds and eventually leading to their death.
What pushes children into this?
Parenting - The drawbacks in present parenting style and reducing social time with the parents, increases the children's time spent on digital devices.
The game gives the children what they don’t have in real life; the warmth, understanding, and connections.
Children feel being under the spotlight while playing game, contrary to the isolation in real life.
Mental health taboo - India still considers seeking help for mental health issues a taboo.
While this is the condition with adults themselves, guiding a child appropriately in mental health issues is even more challenging.
Guidance from a mental health professional is a least thought out option.
Given this, games like the Blue Whale challenge, offer the players - the children and teenagers in their privacy, the attention and validation that they yearn for.
Role of schools - Schools are as integral a part of shaping a child’s psyche as parenting is.
Kids being isolated in schools for various reasons are often unnoticed by the teachers and the management.
Counselling professionals being part of the school and addressing these issues are very rare, especially in the Indian context.
The isolated children seeking social approval and acceptance, are attracted to the options where they are given these.
What is the psychology behind creating this?
Psychologists worldwide feel that people are increasingly turning to external sources of validation.
Increasing social or domestic isolation attracts many to games like the Blue Whale Challenge.
The moderators of the game exploit this social weakness of the young minds.
The creator of the game admitted that the victims of the game are ‘biological waste’ and that he was ‘cleansing the society’.
What is the way forward?
This dark side of the internet impacting children's life calls for attention to our transforming social system.
Child psychology, parenting, social support system, etc should be brought under government's policy focus to build a healthy society and put an end to games engulfing lives.
