Cambridge News wrote ...
Urgent warning to parents after sick 'Momo challenge' makes its way to UK (Mexico, Japan, and USA)

Last year, parents across the globe were warned about a sick new Whatsapp 'suicide game' called Momo.

At the time the terrifying game, which has been linked to the death of a 12-year-old girl in Argentina, had not made its way to the UK.

However it emerged today that a seven-year-old boy from Manchester was a victim of the harrowing challenge.

The disturbing game targets young people via Whatsapp and encourages them to kill themselves or bad things will happen to their friends and families.

Parents are being warned that it could be the next Blue Whale – a vile and dangerous social media game linked to at least 130 teen deaths across Russia.

Momo begins with a shadowy controller sending violent images to the victim over the messaging app.

The game then threatens the player if they refuse to follow the game's 'orders'.

The avatar for Momo is a haunting image of a woman with grotesque features and bulging eyes taken from the work of Japanese artist Midori Hayashi, who is not associated with the game.

The British mum has warned the dangerous game may have spread to Manchester.

Snopes wrote ...
How Much of a Threat Is the Purported ‘Momo Challenge’ Suicide Game?

In recent years social media users have been encountering all sorts of viral “challenges” that exhort them to engage in some form of suggested activity (and usually post photographs or videos of the results). The motivations behind social media challenges can range from raising money for charities to simply encouraging others to take part in some fun and goofy behavior, and the form of such challenges runs the gamut from benign activities (such as dancing in a public setting) to the inherently dangerous (such as setting oneself on fire).

Social media users — and particularly parents of young social media users — have also been beset by reports of highly dangerous challenges, such as those encouraging children to disappear for 72 hours or even commit suicide. But many purported “challenges” of this variety have proved to be much more the products of fevered imaginations and lurid news reporting rather than real-life phenomena.

One example of the latter variety of allegedly dangerous activities is the so-called “Momo” challenge. According to various reports, the Momo challenge is supposedly a form of cyberbullying prevalent on platforms such as WhatsApp and YouTube, through which children receive anonymous threatening messages tied to pictures of “Momo,” an unrelated sculpture of a grinning figure with dark hair and bulging eyes created by a Japanese special effects company:


The “Momo” messages allegedly compel youngsters to engage in perilous activities such as taking pills, stabbing other people, and even killing themselves:
The Momo challenge hit the news in mid-2018 with a report that a 12-year-old Argentinian girl had been motivated by the “Momo Game” to hang herself from a tree in her family’s backyard near Buenos Aires. Authorities in Argentina never did confirm that the girl’s suicide was encouraged by her participation in a viral “game” rather than a real-life person, however: