I’m quoted in a new article about the “Blue Whale game” scare.:

On the surface, Blue Whale has all the hallmarks of a moral panic similar to other “challenges” that often scared parents, such as the choking game, pharma parties, and the fire challenge. All of these were cases where parents, local authorities, and click-hungry media outlets took either isolated incidents or rumors and turned them into full blown scares, no matter how many people were actually doing them.

Indeed, prominent skeptic Benjamin Radford wrote that Blue Whale shares many traits with classic moral panics, including “modern technology and seemingly benign personal devices as posing hidden dangers to children and teens, the threat [of] some influential evil stranger who manipulates the innocent, and an element of conspiracy theory.”

There’s also more on this in a recent episode of Squaring the Strange….

You can find more on me and my work with a search for “Benjamin Radford” (not “Ben Radford”) on Vimeo, and please check out my podcast Squaring the Strange!