Introduction to Amber Alerts on TikTok
TikTok has announced that it will be integrating Amber Alerts into its For You feed, as stated in a recent blog post. This move is the result of a collaboration with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), aiming to harness the power of the US TikTok community to help reunite missing children with their families.
Pilot Program and Rollout
The platform began testing this feature last year with a pilot program in Texas. The results were encouraging, with Amber Alerts in Texas being viewed over 20 million times and leading to 2.5 million visits to the NCMEC website. Following this success, TikTok is now expanding this functionality.
How Amber Alerts Will Appear
When an Amber Alert is issued, users in the vicinity of the missing child will see the alert in their For You feed. Each alert will contain two hyperlinks: one directing to relevant information on the NCMEC website and another to contact 911 for those who may have information to share. Additionally, TikTok will donate advertising credits from these posts to amplify NCMEC’s messaging on their official TikTok account.
Integration with Other Social Media Platforms
This move makes TikTok the latest social media platform to incorporate Amber Alerts. Previously, Instagram started pushing these alerts to users in 2022, and Facebook did the same in 2015. The hope is that TikTok’s adoption of Amber Alerts will lead to more successful reunions of missing children with their loved ones.
