Teenagers in danger blue whale challenge exposes many socio psychological vulnerabilities

Teenagers in danger blue whale challenge exposes many socio psychological vulnerabilities

Technology is a mixed blessing. For children it can mean enriching new avenues of education as well as better entertainment. But the gadgetry that’s such a defining part of their life today also brings with it constantly morphing dangers, which are very difficult for parents to track 24×7. The Blue Whale Challenge, which has been linked to teenage deaths from Russia to America, is a peril that’s come to attention in India over the last month. The structure of this ‘game’ is that over 50 days the victim is given around 50 self-harm tasks, designed to culminate in suicide.
India’s IT ministry has now directed top internet platforms like Google and Facebook to remove all links to the online game. This is necessary, but will not go far enough to correct the social predicament that underlies why some children may participate in such deadly online games. For one, there will remain corners of the internet where such dangers will still lurk. Two, many young people were being pushed to suicide even before the existence of such games, for reasons society does not really understand, and it is easy to blame such games as the proximate cause when actual causation is much more nebulous. In that sense the urban legends circulating in Delhi and environs about someone chopping off women’s hair are a close analogy. They become ways of naming the state of collective insecurity and free-floating anxiety that we inhabit.
Pressure on young people today is enormous: they are confronted by a dysfunctional education system, support of joint families is gone, parents are overstretched by stresses of modern life. Among the solutions have to be better education as well as better parenting: Talk to the children, have a meaningful engagement with their life and, yes, pay attention to what they are up to online.