'Satanic' Blue Whale Game Under Spotlight In Iran After Teenager's Death

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'Satanic' Blue Whale Game Under Spotlight In Iran After Teenager's Death
Frud Bezhan


Scores of suicides and attempted suicides have been provisionally linked to the game, although on closer inspection none of them has been found to have a conclusive tie.

Iranian authorities have blamed a murky social-media challenge known as Blue Whale for suicide leaps by two teenaged girls, throwing the spotlight on an online phenomenon that has been tentatively linked to suicides around the world but remains clouded in mystery.

In the first reported incident of its kind in Iran, police said the two young women jumped from a bridge in the central city of Isfahan on October 21, leaving one dead and the other hospitalized in critical condition.

Some Iranian politicians have responded to the Blue Whale report with calls to further bolster the authorities' control over the Internet, which is already heavily filtered by Iran's clerically dominated government and its censors.

Continued at: https://www.rferl.org/a/iran-blue-whale-internet-game-blamed-teen-suicide/28811450.html