There are so many negative stories about social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, it isn’t good for your social life and it will cause cyber-bullying are two negative arguments given about social media platforms. But there are also a lot of positive things on social media. This blog is about one of these strengths of Facebook, searching for missing people through this social media channel. I have chosen this subject because lately I saw a lot of Facebook posts of different police departments about missing children. They asked the followers to share the messages to reach as much as possible Facebook users. I was wondering if all these posts, shares and comments would help to find the missing person. Is Facebook able to help agencies like the Police to find missing people?
A few weeks ago, when I was looking on my Facebook timeline, I saw a post about a missing girl again. Normally I don’t read the whole story, but in this case it was a girl who lives in the same village as where I live. She had taken the bus and the underground to the railway station Rotterdam Centraal and from that moment she was traceless. This was the second time in a short period that the girl was missing, so her father immediately started an action on Facebook to find his daughter. In one day the message was already shared for over two hundred times and the national media were also posting the story on their timeline. This was astonishing to see how many people helped the parents and the police to find the girl, even in foreign countries people were sharing the posts. And all these shares and media attention through social media led to the fact that the girl was recognized in London and the police brought her back to home.
This is one of the examples of searching for missing people through social media platforms, especially Facebook. It’s incredible to see what the results of the shares and comments are so you can conclude that Facebook is a good method to search for missing people. There are a lot of similar situations and agencies like the police are using social media more and more for purposes like this. These examples shows one of the strengths of social media: together you are stronger!
I think this is a really good alternative for traditional media like sharing printed photos or spread the story through mouth to mouth. In this way the story will reach a lot of people in a very short time, even in foreign countries and that could be the solution as you can see in the example. So in my opinion the police should continue with it, what is your opinion about this?
Sources:
http://tweakers.net/nieuws/103795/facebook-gaat-amber-alert-meldingen-aan-alle-nederlandse-gebruikers-tonen.html
