Facebook Adds Amber Alerts for Missing Kids

Last week, Facebook announced that it is going to start new effort, which will be helpful to find missing children by incorporating the Amber Alerts into the news feed of Facebook’s 185 million American users. This effort is the launched with the partnership of National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and with the help of technology alerts will be sent only those users who will be in targeted search areas. it will be visible on mobile devices and desktop and it will be shareable among users.


According to Facebook officials, Personal details, photographs and other details about missing kids will be included, and the links of National Center's missing-child poster will be included for each case. In 2014, an 11 year girl was safely recovered from an Amber Alert when a motel owner recognized her and her friend had shared on Facebook, said by Facebook's trust and safety manager. According to her relatives it was an amazing word-of-mouth efforts and success, which inspired Facebook to develop technology advanced and more systematic way to help those who want to find missing children with the help of Facebook.

Current statics: 

According to executive director and privacy lawyer of WiredSafety, “Amber Alerts are great initiative and had a long way”. In Canada, Facebook is working with Amber Alerts since 2010, as per Aftab, who is directly involved in the launch of this effort. In past 16 years Amber Alerts have been recovered more than 700 kids, so its clear that now Facebook is going to his effort to save the children’s.

If police will feel that case is good for an Amber Alert, so it will be directed to National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to distribute the news through Facebook for the users of that particular area by law enforcement. Amber Alerts will display all the available information like; photographs and personal details of missing kid, and a license plate number.

The alert will appear in the news feeds, but it will not trigger any phone specific notifications. According, to Facebook officials, a considerable amount of information is essential for case to qualify for an Amber Alert, or else it will not be effective. This is the fact that Amber Alerts are geo-targeted, within the size of limited area, which will determined by enforcement of law and if police suspect that target may headed in those areas.

New trend: 

In present, it’s not an easy thing to forget the sites like; Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram because they are the largest platform on earth, so it could be more effective to use these sites for good cause rather than using the television, radio and newspapers for same reason. According to, President of ofIgnite Social Media, Jim, “Amber Alerts are positive and solid move by Facebook and I like not because they are trying, but in actual they are doing this cause for the benefit of society”. We all know that Facebook love to participate for good cause in public service announcements, even now some of the Facebook users are saying that my smartphone gets Amber Alerts, why not my Twitter and LinkedIn feeds?