Whenever we see an article with a sticking title that’s spreading like wildfire online, we check Snopes.com to see whether or not whatever it is has been reviewed by the fact-checking site. In this age of fake news or news we aren’t sure is fake, this is a resource that has become invaluable. Today we visited the site to check on the verity of a rumor circulating that a Russian “Blue Whale” game was causing teenagers to commit suicide. The article we found on Revelist.com reported that officials in the UK are encouraging parents to be vigilant regarding such a game.
Before panicking and/or passing the warning to you, we checked Snopes to see whether or not this was an internet rumor, and we’re glad we did. Essentially, the Snopes fact checkers have confirmed that although there is a correlation between teen suicide and certain online gaming communities in Russia, there hasn’t been a definitive proof of causation– proof that engaging in these games has led directly to teens committing suicide.
Here’s an excerpt from the Snopes article on the “Blue Whale Suicide Game.” We hope parents are always being vigilant when it comes to warning signs that their children are self-harming or considering suicide. We are also available as a resource to parents and children in the greater Cleveland area, and we hope you’ll reach out if you would like assessment, treatment or resources regarding suicide prevention.
CLAIM: The “Blue Whale” suicide game has been responsible for more than 130 suicides in Russia.
RATING: UNPROVEN
ORIGIN:
In February 2017, English-language web sites caught wind of a purported “suicide game” that had reportedly resulted in more than a hundred deaths in Russia. The general premise of the game, which goes by several names but is commonly referred to as the “blue whale” game, is as follows:
The player signs up to play the game and agrees to follow instructions over the course of 50 days.
An administrator assigns a series of tasks (anything from cutting yourself to listening to song) that the player must accomplish.
The player wins when they complete the final task, committing suicide, on the 50th day.
The claim that the “blue whale” suicide game (named after the way whales sometimes beach themselves and then die) had resulted in a wave of suicides appears to have originated with a misinterpretation of a May 2016 story from the Russian site Novaya Gazeta. That article reported dozens of suicides of children in Russia during a six-month span, asserting that some of the people who had taken their lives were part of the same online game community on VK.com, a social media network based out of St. Petersburg, Russia:
We counted 130 suicides of children that occurred in Russia from November 2015 to April 2016 (!) – Almost all of them were members of the same group on the Internet.
Novaya Gazeta reported that “at least” eighty of the suicides were linked to these “blue whale” games, but an investigation by Radio Free Europe found that no suicides had been definitively linked to these online communities:
But while the Russian-language Internet is groaning with profiles of young people playing or seeking to play the game, shocking photographs of self-injury like cutting marked with the game’s hashtags, and purported links to teen suicides, not a single death in Russia or Central Asia has been definitively tied to Blue Whale.
Over the last six months or so, dozens of suicides and attempted suicides in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan have been provisionally linked to the game, although on closer inspection none of them has been found to have a conclusive tie.
Furthermore, the Novaya Gazeta report was highly criticized at the time of its publication. For instance, the web site Meduza noted that Noyaya Gazeta arrived at their conclusion that a social media game was causing teenagers to commit suicide because several teenagers from the same social media group had taken their own lives. However, Meduza argued, it is more reasonable to assume that depressed or suicidal teenagers are simply drawn to the same social media groups, not that the groups were causing them to commit suicide…