What is the horrifying Blue Whale game and how can you protect youngsters from the tragic ending

Even without games or other online stories, we’re seeing more and more disturbing cases of people taking their own lives, or the lives of others, whilst live streaming on applications such as Facebook. This is the alarming reality of the world we live in today where many cannot decode between real life and online.

So what can you do to protect young people in your care?

It’s important not to jump to any conclusions, but to use the resources you have to analyse whether a child is at risk.

A noticeable difference in behaviour, such as withdrawal from social activities or acting anxious can be a warning sign that a child could be experiencing some form of abuse. Signs of self harm also begin to link behaviours to those of the challenges through Blue Whale. Luckily, most children who are dragged into playing the game are often disturbed by the thought of taking their own life, and will send out a cry for help before doing so. This gives an opportunity to save the child before it’s too late and thankfully there have been a number of reported cases where intervention has occurred in time to stop the suicide.

It’s also important for local authorities and schools to ensure they have appropriate systems in place to block access to not only Blue Whale but other similar sites. Using a filtering solution such as Smoothwall will allow you to control whether young people in your care can access such content, and allow you to place controls on social media use. This is important due to social media being used as the carrier for the games communication. It’s also important that you are able to use the information about individual’s online behaviour to identify whether they are indeed taking part or being drawn into conversations such as these. Using our safeguarding tool or monitoring system Visigo, you are able to review the sites being accessed by pupils or students and are able to monitor their online conversations if given a cause for concern.

Many parents have already been warned by schools to be aware of Blue Whale, and therefore it’s important the school also takes the appropriate measures to protect people. If you’d like to talk in more detail about how Smoothwall can protect children against Blue Whale, please contact us today.