TikTok’s new feature aims to help locate missing children more quickly

By Patrick Hearn Published March 20, 2025

TikTok has partnered with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) to share Amber Alerts directly to your For You page. This only applies to American users — Amber Alerts don’t exist outside the United States — but the goal is to get all relevant information about missing children to a larger number of people as quickly as possible.

For those unfamiliar, Amber Alerts are activated in the most concerning child-abduction cases. Amber Alerts are a standard part of most mobile devices and are capable of overriding a phone’s default vibration and audio settings if necessary. They provide a blast of information, including the age of the missing child, their name, description, and details (if available) of the suspected abductor and their vehicle.

TikTok first tested the Amber Alert system last year from August to December, and it resulted in more than 20 million views and 2.5 million visits to the NCMEC website. TikTok is now expanding this feature to more than 170 million Americans; however, Amber Alerts will only be shown to those in relevant locations.

“Time is crucial when a child goes missing. Using platforms like TikTok, communities can quickly spread vital information and help locate missing children. After a successful Texas pilot, this national expansion will enable more communities to raise awareness and bring missing children home quickly. Precious children are counting on us to do everything we can to rescue them,” says Colleen Nick, CEO of the Morgan Nick Foundation.

The addition of Amber Alerts is a welcome one, and just another example of how TikTok continues to improve safety guidelines on its platform for its younger users. The social media app recently introduced a feature that interrupts teenage users’ late-night scrolling with calming music.

TikTok has also added a wider range of parental controls to give moms and dads more granular command of when their children use the platform.

This isn’t the first social media platform to integrate Amber Alerts into its feed. Instagram did the same in 2022.