TikTok Joins the Fight Against Child Abductions by Introducing Amber Alerts to Users

TikTok is introducing Amber Alerts directly into the For You feed, as the platform recently announced through a blog entry. They have partnered with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) to implement these alerts and harness the strength of the US TikTok community in aiding the search for missing children.

This social media platform began trialing this feature last year with a pilot initiative in Texas. The trial proved effective, with TikTok reporting that Amber Alerts in Texas were viewed over 20 million times and resulted in 2.5 million visits to the NCMEC website.

When an AMBER Alert is activated, users residing near the location of the missing child will see it appear in their For You feed. These posts will include two links; one will direct to pertinent NCMEC information, while the other enables users to contact 911 if they have any leads. Additionally, the platform is contributing advertising credits from these posts to further promote NCMEC’s messages via their official TikTok account.

This is not the first social media platform to implement Amber Alerts. Instagram started alerting users back in 2022, while Facebook introduced it in 2015. It is hoped that TikTok’s embrace of this initiative will lead to more children being safely reunited with their families.