Parents with children on the internet got quite a scare recently.

The “Momo Challenge” was reported to be infiltrating innocent children’s content on YouTube.

What’s the “Momo Challenge”?

Momo is an image of a Japanese sculpture with the face of a girl on top of a bird’s body.

The challenge began as a chain letter passed around on the Facebook owned messaging app, WhatsApp.  The warning was that the image was associated with a game that encouraged children to self harm.

After YouTube looked into the accusation, it turned out to be a hoax.

Like many viral hoax challenges, Momo has made the rounds in a few places and quickly died out after it surfaced.

Most remember the Tide pod challenge which turned out to be a hoax.

Like fake news, viral hoaxes are becoming more common, what they have in common is they use fear to get people to spread them.

When something shocks you, pause for a moment and consider that. Do a Google search on the subject with hoax after it.  If it is indeed a hoax, there will be plenty of search results stating that.

The internet is a wonderful place because anyone can publish anything, but it is also a scary place because anyone can publish anything.