Momo: A Social Experiment?

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Ben Brosius

Momo; A Social Experiment

Ben Brosius, Opinion Editor

Over the past few months, parents have been increasingly aware of the terrors that could be in their child’s YouTube video. The terror — dubbed Momo — is a cryptic, subhuman creature with eerie, facial-features that commands children to commit self-harm. Is this the work of someone purposefully trying to commit harm for fun, or is it a social experiment?

I theorize that Momo is a social experiment gone right. The creature has gotten into YouTube Kids, WhatsApp, and many other social networks where kids are enslaved to their screens for. Think of how young kids are so obsessed with technology now, and how most parents let their toddler-age children sit with IPads and Phones for hours at a time to let them entertain themselves. Momo is a warning to doing this. Even if Momo is not a social experiment, it should be a frontline reason to further regulation on children’s content. While commanding harm to young children is not a good way to run a social experiment, it definitely worked in getting attention to the subject of what your kids could be watching.

Momo is a warning for unsuspecting parents of what could lay in your kid’s innocent YouTube history. If you do not let your child be babysat by a screen, you should have no worry in whether Momo has already made contact with your kid.