SHILLONG: With many suicide cases reported elsewhere in the country after playing the infamous ‘Blue Whale Game’ by the youths, Meghalaya police have cautioned the parents.
In an advisory , the Special Superintendent of Police (CID) said that the game, created by Philipp Budeikin, is directly targeting children and encouraging them to harm themselves by completing 50 different challenges with the final challenge being suicide. The game is linked to the deaths of more than 100 young people around the world.
It has been reported that when kids accept the game; the administrator gets some personal information from them. Each challenge becomes more dangerous than the last.
In case children want to leave or terminate the challenge earlier, the administrator threatens with exposure or harm to their family. When the 50th day comes, a curator instructs the participants on how to commit a suicide.
The police wanted the parents to protect their children and to watch out for signs and symptoms which include visible marks like deep cuts or wounds on any part of the body of the child, becoming withdrawn from friends and family, persistent low mood and unhappiness among others.
According to the police, the trend is that the child seems to be worried since he is not able to carry out day to day tasks.
Besides, sudden outbursts of anger directed at hemselves or others and loss of interest in activities that they used to enjoy are other symptoms.
Police stressed on the need to have the parental control software to prevent any untoward incidents.
The softare allows seeing all keyboard strokes made on the kids’ devices.
“If a kid gets a challenge to do something harmful, he will Google how to do and the parent can detect it right away”, police said.
The parents have been asked to monitor the kids’ search history and get useful insights which will help them to see the state of mind of the children.
Police also asked the parents to view the child’s text messages, call logs, communication via Facebook, Snapchat, WhatsApp, and others .
“Moreover, the parents should try to limit apps’ usages and block sites promoting dangerous activities”, the advisory said.
Police also asked the parents to talk to the children about the game whether they have heard about it at schools or elsewhere.
There is need to create awareness among the school authorities too, police added.
