Instagram is bringing another child-safety feature to its app, and it could actually be useful. Starting this week, you will be seeing pop-up AMBER Alerts in your Instagram Feed. If there is a child missing in your area, Instagram will act as one of the official channels for alerting the public and notify you.
This feature has been around on Facebook for a while, since 2015. But it’s only coming to Instagram now in collaboration with The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). Adam Mosseri announced the new feature and said that it’s been introduced in 25 countries around the world. “This means that if you’re in the vicinity of a missing child, you might see an AMBER alert showing important details about the missing child such as a photo & any other information that can be provided,” Mosseri writes on Twitter.
In case you don’t know what AMBER Alerts are, here’s the official explanation: When law enforcement issues an AMBER Alert, NCMEC is notified and re-distributes the alert to the appropriate secondary distributors. As far as Meta’s platforms go, Facebook has been one of them for the past seven years, and now Instagram has joined as well. The AMBER Alert system is being used in all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Indian country, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and 27 other countries across the globe. There has been an initiative to implement AMBER Alert in Serbia as well, but it hasn’t been done yet. Needless to say, I hope that this will change. [via Digital Trends]
