⚠️Spoiler alert
I spent last night watching Unknown Numbers: High School Catfish, and I’ll be honest – I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. It’s the kind of documentary that makes you pause, because it’s not just about what happened in that specific high school. It’s about something bigger: how old psychological patterns are now finding new life online.
The Old Story: Münchhausen by Proxy
In psychology, there’s something called Münchhausen by proxy – a condition where someone (often a caregiver) makes another person sick, or pretends they are, to gain attention and to increase the dependency of the victim. It sounds extreme, and it is. But at the heart of it, it’s about something very human: the need to be noticed, cared for, and validated, even if it comes at someone else’s expense.
The New Stage: Social Media
What hit me, as a psychologist student, while watching the documentary was how similar this digital stalking and harassment felt. Instead of faking illness, people fake identities. Instead of using hospitals or doctors, they use phones, Snapchat, Instagram. The stage has shifted, but the play feels familiar.
The motives overlap:
- to be the center of someone’s emotional world,
- to control the story,
- to keep people close, no matter the cost.
And while the setting is new, the damage is just as real.
Why It Matters
In traditional Münchhausen by proxy, a caregiver fabricates or induces illness in their victim, often a child, to then step in as the protector. In High School Catfish, the dynamic is hauntingly similar – only the “symptoms” weren’t physical, they were digital. Through anonymous text messages, the mother created fear and distress, only to then be the one who comforted her daughter.
On the individual level, this reveals the same psychological mechanism: a desperate need to be central, to matter, to be the rescuer. By controlling both the threat and the comfort, she ensured she remained at the core of her daughter’s emotional world. The betrayal is profound – love and harm coming from the same source.
On the societal level, the medium matters. The fact that something as ordinary as text messages can become the channel for such manipulation shows how technology expands the reach of old patterns.
That’s what makes this case so unsettling. It reminds us that Münchhausen by proxy isn’t confined to hospitals or medical records. It adapts to whatever tools are available – and in a world where everyone carries a phone, the boundary between care and control can be crossed silently, message by message.
My Takeaway
I don’t think the lesson from High School Catfish is to stop trusting technology or to live in fear of every message we receive. But it does remind us to stay alert to how stories – even the ones closest to us – can be used, not only to comfort, but also to control.
For me, the documentary was a chilling reminder that attention is powerful. It can create closeness, but it can just as easily be weaponized. And maybe the real question isn’t only “Why would a mother do this to her own child?” but also “How do we build awareness so that trust and care don’t become tools of manipulation?”
What stays with me most is the daughter. The betrayal she endured is profound – the very person meant to protect her also orchestrated her fear. And yet, her decision to continue her studies in criminology speaks to resilience. My hope is that she will be able to transform this painful experience into strength, and perhaps even insight that will serve her in her field. In that sense, her story may still hold the possibility of meaning and growth, even if it was born out of manipulation.
✨ If you liked this post, you might also enjoy Maybe the Narrative Was Never Yours to Begin With. It’s a reflection on the false narratives we inherit — the roles and expectations written into us long before we can speak, and how they shape the way we see ourselves.
