Alert for WhatsApp groups that promote suicide and eating disorders among minors

An investigation of the program Seventh Day, by Caracol Televisión, revealed the dangerous communities that have formed through instant messaging applications, such as WhatsApp, which promote serious eating disorders among its members, all minors.

With messages such as “princesses don't eat”, “if you fall into the temptation to eat you should cut yourself as punishment” and “you don't gain weight if you don't consume anything”, young people from different countries of Latin America, including Colombia, believe in the rest of the members the need to be extremely thin to be accepted by a false standard of beauty .

The victims, almost all women under the age of 16, have dedicated themselves to following a global trend known as #AnayMia, which refers to anorexia and bulimia, and invites them to give their own life and health at the cost of a few kilos less.

However, the danger of these communities on WhatsApp does not only lie in the promotion of eating disorders, since there are also some in which suicide is incited, which has left victims such as Samir, a 15-year-old teenager who removed her with a firearm in Bogotá, after joining one of these groups.

“You're not able to shoot yourself, Samir”, “the brave are in the cemeteries” and “living doesn't make sense”; these are some of the messages that the child received before making that decision and that were found by his father on his cell phone, along with other photos in which he posed pointing a gun to his head.

As part of the investigation, journalists from 'Seventh Day' took on the task of joining some similar groups and presented the modus operandi of administrators, adults from other countries who are dedicated to promoting this type of self-destructive practices among boys and girls.

In addition, the Caracol channel program exposed other cases of minors who also attempted their own lives, for complying with viral remains such as those of the 'blue whale', one that caused the death of hundreds of young people in the world and owes its name to a very particular feature of this marine species, which by its own will approaches the coast to die.

In social media groups, administrators propose different naive tests such as watching more than 24 hours of horror films without interruption, but which rise in tone to become gloomy and worrying, such as self-harm games: the “drawing” of a whale with a knife and different challenges that lead to psychological collapse. The final test, after 50 days, is to commit suicide.

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