TikTok is partnering with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) to bring real-time Amber Alerts directly to users’ For You feeds in the United States, the company announced on Thursday.
With this new feature, if an Amber Alert is activated by law enforcement and you are in the designated search area, the alert will now appear in your For You feed. A spokesperson for the company told TechCrunch that TikTok identifies whether users are within a specific search through their device’s IP address.
The alert will include key details that are available in standard Amber Alerts, such as the child’s photo, description, last known location, and any other critical information that could aid in the search.
TikTok says the nationwide launch of Amber Alerts follows a pilot in Texas, where Amber Alerts on TikTok were viewed over 20 million times, and led to 2.5 million visits to NCMEC’s website between August and December 2024.
The company says it’s also donating advertising credits to amplify NCMEC’s messaging on TikTok around missing children and youth safety information.
It makes sense for TikTok to introduce in-app Amber Alerts, as the platform’s massive user base of teens may be more likely to notice these alerts than traditional notifications that they may tend to overlook.
“Every second counts when a child goes missing,” said Gavin Portnoy, Vice President of Communications & Brand at NCMEC, in a press release. “By harnessing the reach and speed of a platform like TikTok, parents, caregivers, and communities nationwide can become powerful advocates in the urgent effort to locate missing children.”
TikTok isn’t the only social network to integrate Amber Alerts into its platform. Facebook has been pushing Amber Alerts to users since 2016, and Instagram has done so since 2022.
