Instagram has announced that it is adding a new feature named AMBER alerts on users’ feeds to allow people to see and share missing children notices in their area.
The new feature will be released within this week and will be rolling out in 25 different countries: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Ecuador, Greece, Guatemala, Ireland, Jamaica, Korea, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Romania, South Africa, Taiwan, Ukraine, the UK, the United Arab Emirates and the US.
Users will be shown details about the abducted child such as their photos, description, location of the abduction and any information which may help better the chances of locating the missing child.
The photo and video sharing firm said that it is working with organisations such as the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the US, the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children, the National Crime Agency in the UK, the Attorney General’s Office in Mexico, the Australian Federal Police and more for this feature.
In an official statement, Instagram said: “We know that the chances of finding a missing child increase when more people are on the lookout, especially in the first few hours. With this update, if an AMBER Alert is activated by law enforcement and you are in the designated search area, the alert will now appear in your Instagram feed.”
The AMBER alerts will be location-specific and will be based on the information on the user’s profile, IP address and location services if turned on.
Instagram noted that In 2015, it launched AMBER Alerts on Facebook. Since then, the alerts have assisted in hundreds of successful child endangerment cases in the US and around the world.
For example, in 2020, Amanda Disley and her husband helped rescue 11-year-old Charlotte Moccia of Springfield, Massachusetts after seeing an AMBER Alert on Facebook. And in 2016, an AMBER Alert was issued after a four-year-old girl was abducted in Lakeland, Florida.
Kaytlin Brown, an anaesthesia technician at Baptist East Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee was on her lunch break when she saw the alert on Facebook, recognized the missing child and quickly took action.
