What is the MoMo Challenge? IT Lesson (Understanding Fake News)

If you’re a teacher, it’s likely that you will have heard your students talking about the MoMo Challenge with their peers or even asking you questions about the challenge. As parents and teachers we want to ensure that our students know how to stay safe online, and a huge part of staying safe is understanding how to identify fake news (like the MoMo challenge) from real news and how to act responsibly when we encounter content that can encourage harmful behaviour.

This Powerpoint aims to highlight where the MoMo challenge came from, how it spread throughout the internet and reasons behind the attention it has received. The lesson aims to highlight how negative news attracts more attention than positive news, how images such as the Japanese sculpture are used as “click bait” to attract more clicks on websites to earn more money, and so on.

This lesson has been designed to be completed in an IT lab where students have access to the internet in order to complete research tasks and the poster task at the end.