Texas Family Blames Online 'Blue Whale Challenge' for Teen's Suicide
There is a terrifying game going around the internet that is being linked to several teenage suicides all around the world.
The Blue Whale Challenge is a game circulating through various social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram convincing teenagers to partake in 50 daily tasks including mutilation, watching a horror film during a specific time at night and then ultimately ending with a final task of committing suicide.
While the Blue Whale Challenge has grown steadily in popularity outside the United States, it looks like the sinister online trend has finally reached the country as a 15-year-old teen from Texas has reportedly committed suicide.
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There is still much skepticism about the authenticity of the challenge but the Gonzalez family says that the game is somehow linked to the suicide of Isaiah Gonzalez.
According to his father, Jorge, they found the boy hanging in his bedroom closet while his cell phone was propped up on a shoe recording his death and broadcasting his suicide on social media, Fox News reported. Isaiah was said to have been sending pictures of his completed tasks to his friends who thought that the teenager was joking.
Isaiah's death is the second reported time that a teenager had committed suicide in the United States as coaxed by the Blue Whale Challenge. As reported by CBS affiliate WNCN, a 16-year-old teenage girl had earlier committed suicide and her parents, who chose to keep their identity unknown, have blamed the Blue Whale Challenge.
According to Isaiah's sister, Alexis, the teen would receive threatening messages from the perpetrators of the Blue Whale Challenge, called "curators," when he failed a task.
Outside the United States, the Blue Whale Challenge has already claimed hundreds of lives and in Russia alone, where the challenge is thought to have originated, about 130 teens have died due to the game.
Jorge is urging other parents to keep watch over their children and teach them all about the dangers of the internet and social media.
