Ex-Minister Inaya Ezzedine addressed the Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Information asking them to take the necessary measures to ban the notorious electronic game known as “Momo” and that spread recently on Whatsapp, YouTube and Facebook. I wish she had done some research before releasing such ignorant statements, and consequently encouraging further censorship.

This whole “Momo Challenge” thing apparently tells children to perform dangerous tasks and threatens them by sending disturbing images or personal ones. If they fail to comply, a woman, a sculpture with a stretched out face and bulging eyes will hurt them or their loved ones.

To begin with, the sculpture is an artwork by a Japanese special effects company and has nothing to do with the so-called challenge. Second of all, this whole challenge is nothing but a hoax spreading online. I’ve read several articles and no one has been able to pin down this challenge or dig out videos promoting it, or any harmful challenges all together.

NEVERTHELESS, the real problem here is not the challenge itself but the lack of proper supervision by parents. If anything, this should serve as an eye opener for all parents to ensure their children are safe online, to monitor what they’re watching and where, and to teach them how to surf the internet safely and avoid interacting with strangers.

Parents need to limit as much as possible the unsupervised access children are getting to their devices. Even though Brian is only 3 years old, he can easily scroll through YouTube videos, which is why I forbid him from using smartphones to begin with, and he can only watch YouTube on TV with us around. There are some creepy trolls out there that are far more dangerous than this Momo Challenge.

I’d recommend sticking to Netflix and avoiding YouTube all together to be honest.

Here are some useful tips on how to properly approach this matter.