Reflections on the blue whale challenge

I write this with heavy heart, anger, confusion. I’ve seen this days information all over the place about the “Blue whale challenge”. And many people have come and asked me “What can we do about it?”. To be honest, I have absolutely no idea.

This Russian game has taken the life of thousands of kids, because there are some as young as 10 year olds, and adolescents in several countries. It makes them get involved and involved, with challenges that disturb their mental stability and that puts them in contact with self harm, suicide, torture, terror, etc. It teaches them the need to punish themselves if they don’t fulfil the challenges. It threatens them to kill their families if they decide to quit the game. It convinces them that life isn’t worth living, that passion and meaning is found in suffering, death and pain.

If someone asks me my honest opinion, as someone who struggles with major depressive disorder and General anxiety, suicide and self harm, I cannot even conceive how someone COULD make up a platforms that induce people into such a painful reality. As someone who struggles daily to take every breath, who’s fight a lot to find meaning and purpose to make life worth living no matter your mental diagnosis, I cannot express in words my anger when thinking about the manipulation and threat that make someone who’s only been in this world a decade, decides to leave. I’m speechless when I think all the lives that been lost, all the blood that’s been spilled, all the pain felt, just to beat a challenge. How do you explain parents, fellows, brothers and sisters, classmates and teachers that someone is gone because a freaking game? That it could’ve been avoided if he or she hadn’t entered that platform?

That was me, the patient speaking.

As a mental health advocate, my heart aches. My mind wonders how did we got here. I cannot stop thinking in possible ways to fight this others than shutting down the websites and apps that promote this game, to increase parental control… but that’s not enough. Because the bottom like is that there’s a whole generation out there, growing up thinking life is a joke and suicide is absolutely trivial. And how do you convince them that life is worth living? That suicide is the result of a mental imbalance? That there you don’t find a solution? That life has meaning by itself?

And also. How do we educate people on suicide prevention, on awareness, on treating it as a serious matter when news come out saying that it’s just a game? That people take their lives because they were completing some challenges? That a 20 something year old came up with a game so addicting, repulsive and enviciating that has cost more than 150 lives world wide?

At the end of the day, as much as freaky and repulsive I find this game, what matters it’s that it adds and adds to the numbers. Each day, suicide takes away more people. Each day it’s harder to stop and prevent. Each day it gets more out of hands… So we, that have the privilege to be alive: What are we going to do about it?