Starting this week, Instagram will bring AMBER Alerts to the platform to provide millions of Georgians a way to help when a child goes missing in their area.

When a child goes missing, it’s crucial to share their photo and description as quickly as possible with community members in the vicinity. It’s a common sound on cell phones. Just this week an AMBER Alert was issued for two-year-old Jacob Coney from Laurens County.

Instagram will show AMBER Alerts with a photo and description of the missing person, along with a direct link to alert local Georgia law enforcement right from the app.

When law enforcement activates an AMBER Alert, people in the designated search area will see it in their Instagram feed. A photo, description, location of last sighting and other details will be provided to encourage people to alert any possible sightings to law enforcement.

This complements other AMBER Alerts, which you might see on your cell phone but which only show text descriptions.
Through a partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), Meta will add the power of the Instagram community to finding and saving children at risk.
Facebook rolled out AMBER Alerts in 2015 and has since assisted law enforcement in hundreds of successful child endangerment cases in the US and globally.

This new integration will help everyone in an affected area to be on the lookout, increasing the chances of every child being returned safely to their families.

How Does it Work?

The U.S. Department of Justice AMBER Alert system is a critical tool in raising community awareness rapidly, leading to the successful recovery of more than 1,100 children since its founding in 1996.

“Instagram is a platform based on the power of photos, making it a perfect fit for the AMBER Alert program,” said Michelle DeLaune, President and CEO at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. “We know that photos are a critical tool in the search for missing children and by expanding the reach to the Instagram audience, we’ll be able to share photos of missing children with so many more people.”

If an Instagram user thinks they’ve seen the missing child, they can click on a link in their feed to call the police department in the area. They can also share the alert with friends to further spread the word.

To know who to show these alerts to, Meta uses a variety of signals, including the city you list on your profile, your IP address and location services (if you have it turned on). These alerts allow people wherever they are, on their phone, to be on the lookout.