Viral Claim Misrepresents the Number of Missing Children in 2020
The Claim
In 2020, 899,141 children went missing across Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The media ignored these cases of missing children, focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic instead.
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Emerging story
The claim first went viral in late 2020.
Misbar’s Analysis
The numbers in the claim are not representative of missing children in 2020. The numbers appear to originate from a statistics page on the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s website. However, there are several problems with these numbers in correlation with the original claim.
Misbar's investigation found that the stats represent the numbers of missing children from 2015, not 2020. In the United States in 2015, 460,699 (with 5,137 cases appearing to be involuntary) juveniles under the age of 18 were reported missing. The 2020 numbers are quite different, with 365,348 reported missing. The stats also claim that 100,000 German children disappear yearly, but the link it gives as a source lists 60,000 annual cases. Therefore, comparing these numbers with the media’s recent focus on COVID cases is not relevant.
Further, the numbers represent children that are reported missing and not those that were necessarily abducted. According to USA Today, the vast majority of missing children are runaways, representing 90% of cases in 2016. Runaways return home 99% of the time, with more than half coming home within the same week. These cases rarely warrant major media attention.
