KINGSTON, Jamaica — The Office of the Children’s Advocate (OCA) today urged parents to be extremely vigilant after what the office said were reports surfacing worldwide about the emergence of a deadly new suicide game called the ‘Blue Whale Challenge’.

In a release, OCA said Children’s Advocate Diahann Gordon Harrison was joining several Caribbean stakeholders in alerting parents to the suicide game, and urging them to pay attention to the social media usage of their children.

The OCA said reports have surfaced that within the last six months, the game, which originated in Russia, has been blamed for the suicide deaths of more than 130 children.

According to the release the ‘Blue Whale Challenge’ consists of 50 challenges, each of which needs to be performed daily. Each challenge is intended to encourage the player to do things like jump from the roof of a building, cut their skin with a razor in the shape of a whale or to hang themselves on day 50 in order to be declared the ‘winner’.

The activities are reportedly assigned daily by a ‘group administrator’ who is responsible for issuing each group member with their tasks daily.

 “We in Jamaica need to be ahead of the curve on this matter as it’s just a matter of time before it becomes widespread locally. While we have not yet had any reports of the game being here, with the high number of contact hours that teenagers and younger children in Jamaica spend on social media, it is highly probable that they are aware of this game and may very well become curious about it. We don’t want them experimenting and/or self harming as a result of this ‘game’ or any other,” Gordon Harrison said.

According to OCA, similar warnings have been issued in European countries, as well as Caribbean territories such as Martinique and St Lucia.