METHUEN, Mass. — School officials in northeastern Massachusetts are raising concerns about a new social media phenomenon that is rumored to be behind teen suicides around the globe.

Methuen Superintendent Judith Scannell posted a letter on the school district’s website Tuesday warning of the “Blue Whale Challenge,” an app that instructs users to carry out 50 increasingly dangerous daily tasks. The tasks range from watching horror movies to self-mutilation, ultimately building up to the final challenge in which participants are told to commit suicide.

Online reports say the challenge takes place on a smartphone app, and that it also can contact users through other social media outlets including YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.

While claims that the challenge is responsible for so many deaths is widespread, a lack of hard evidence showing that a “Blue Whale Challenge” smartphone app ever existed in the first place leads many to believe the challenge is rooted in an internet hoax. A report on the myth-debunking website Snopes.com determined claims that the “Blue Whale” suicide game is responsible for 130 Russian deaths are unproven.

However, stories about the app have been circulating online recently as various reports claim teens have taken their lives while participating in the challenge, including a 15-year-old in Texas and a 16-year-old in Atlanta. School officials in Baldwin County, Alabama issued a statement warning parents of the game in May.

The app is believed to be developed by Phillipp Budeikin, a 21-year-old Russian man, who pleaded guilty in May to inciting the suicide of least 16 teenage girls, the BBC reported. According to the BBC, Budeikin started the app in 2013 and may not be the only creator. 

Area superintendents said they have not heard of the app circulating among their own students, but are keeping their eyes and ears open. Leaders in districts throughout the county have issued warnings similar to Scannell’s.

“I have not in any way, shape or form heard a word about it (in Methuen), but it’s out there,” Scannell said. “It’s a new world and we’re just trying to keep up the best we can with new apps that seem to come out monthly.”

Scannell posted a notice to parents Tuesday on the district site, explaining the app and encouraging parents to monitor their children’s app use.

“This post is not meant to alarm anyone, but rather to encourage parents to be proactive in protecting their children from potential negative influences on the internet,” she wrote.

The Blue Whale app does not exist in Apple’s App Store, but a “Red Whale” app does. The description in the store says it is a response to the Blue Whale, and includes “challenges” like “Tell a loved one how much you love them” and “Donate your old clothes to those who need them.”

Still, Scannell isn’t taking the chance that the Blue Whale app is fake, and neither is Superintendent Earl Metzler, who oversees the Timberlane and Hampstead school districts in New Hampshire. Metzler likened the app’s effect and his own response to it to the popular Netflix series 13 Reasons Why, which caused widespread alarm in April as kids and teens rapidly consumed the show, which grappled with subjects including suicide and rape.

“From a parent’s perspective, I’ve heard of it, but I haven’t heard of it in Hampstead or Timberlane yet,” said Metzler, who has teenage children. “At this point, it hasn’t made its way in any kind of formal or informal conversation or complaint from parents or children, but we are aware of that.”

Scannell said she has informed her staff of the rumored app, which Metzler called “the latest of bad technology.”

“Parents need to be aware that this is out there, and parents have to have conversations with their children and they have to know what they’re looking at,” Scannell said. “Of course, it’s very concerning because we want the best for our kids.”

Scannell suggested that parents ask their children if there are any new games or popular “challenges” that they or their friends are playing or have heard about online, and search their kids’ social media accounts for hashtags like #BlueWhaleChallenge.

Blessing and Shea writes for the North Andover, Massachusetts Eagle Tribune.