Momo challenge shows how even experts are falling for digital hoaxes

“An evil suicide game” was how one newspaper described the “Momo challenge”, a so-called game that supposedly involved children receiving a series of threatening and increasingly dangerous instructions from an anonymous contact on their smartphone. Such sensationalist reporting risked whipping up a frenzied panic, and it soon became apparent there was little evidence the game was real, with one children’s organisation saying it had received more enquiries from the press than from parents.