Facebook announced Tuesday — National AMBER Alert Awareness Day — that it will begin posting AMBER Alerts to the news feeds’ of its users.
“In 2014, an 11-year-old girl was safely recovered after a motel owner recognized her from an AMBER Alert that a friend had shared on Facebook,” Emily Vacher, trust and safety manager of Facebook, said on the company’s blog. “The woman called the police, and the child was found unharmed. It’s amazing word-of-mouth efforts like this that inspired us to develop a more systematic way to help find missing children on Facebook.”
When there is an AMBER Alert in the Facebook user’s area, they will see a short post about it as the second item on their news feed. The post will remain in the user’s news feed until the child is found. Facebook’s partners with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to integrate AMBER Alerts into user’s newsfeeds.
The AMBER Alert System began in 1996 when Dallas-Fort Worth broadcasters teamed with local police to develop an early warning system to help find abducted children. AMBER stands for America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response and was created as a legacy to 9-year-old Amber Hagerman.
Jim Baird, professor of Bible, said as a father and grandfather, AMBER Alert notifications on Facebook are a good idea.
“A lot of people don’t watch the news very regularly,” Baird said. “I don’t get to watch TV very much, certainly not at all in the daytime. But Facebook sometimes, I’m there on it during the daytime, so I might get [AMBER Alerts] to me.”
Sophomore Grace Nix said AMBER Alert notifications would reach more people than news stations do.
“The general news stations don’t necessarily capture everything that is going on,” Nix said. “It’s another way to show the public a really eminent issue, children who are in danger. … I think this is more relevant to our generation.”
Facebook hopes to gain more people’s attention through these new notifications and enable people to join in the search.
“If you send out an AMBER Alert and if anyone sees something strange and possibly if they see a child fitting your child’s description, or grandchild’s description, they might be in the position to alert the authorities,” Baird said. “If they haven’t seen the AMBER Alert, that won’t happen, or is less likely to happen. So, it can make a lot of difference.”
Baird said this new technology would put him at ease if his own family members went missing.
“I think I would feel better if I knew more people were aware and were on the lookout,” Baird said. “That would make me feel some better.”
With social media being something nearly all people use, especially today’s generation, Facebook is an ideal way for people to see AMBER Alerts.
“The more that social media that is used to get the information out, the better,” sophomore Faith Fugar said. “I think that people answer phones faster, and then Facebook, but I do think that Facebook is a good resource to use.”
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