A discussion about data.

[Not Forever]

I’m not sure if this is the right section, but to be safe I decided to post it in off-topic.

Recently, I watched a video of someone I greatly respect speaking in a problematic way about child kidnappings in the United States. It’s not the first time I’ve heard this story, and it’s not the first time I’ve heard it presented as something widespread, as an endemic problem often linked to pedophilia.

Not knowing where to look for data, I did what any person in 2026 would do and asked ChatGPT. I got data that looked roughly like this: 400,000 reports of missing children per year, of which only 140,000 are actually missing, and 90% of those are runaways from home.

I pressed further about pedophilia and kidnappings by strangers (which is where a lot of concerns about Roblox and similar things come from), and it narrowed the data down to 100–300 cases per year in a population of 300 million people, 90% of which involve sexual-motivation kidnappings.

Put in perspective, in context… isn’t that a bit low?
Isn’t it dramatically low?
In this light, maybe for a child, a bathtub is more dangerous than a stranger.

Does anyone know what I can look at to get better informed?

[Jim Burton]

Teens have their own will and control of their bodies. They do stuff on their own, like go places.

Naturally, America spins these cases of agency with its preferred agenda, which involves "children" being abducted and usually raped by a badman. This narrative appeases the fears of Americans, instilled into them from a young age as part of their national identity - fears of a ravaging and unstoppable force coming from outside to plunder the weak. Since America is a highly individualistic society, with individualism in its core ideology, the idea of capture and removal of the weak among them is a considerable threat, as it upsets the sub-narrative for that ideology. Similar to school shootings. Look at how ICE are behaving, and how this is all linked to propaganda and fear.

When teens "run away", it is presented as an "emergency", because parents are really meant to own teenagers.

"Classical" (never was) abductions are incredibly rare, regardless of how the NCMEC are labeling their latest data. Usually there is some concession to this when you read the first 10% of their materials, but they find new and creative ways to hype the garden variety threat, which is simply teens showing agency and not conforming.

[DANAT4T]

Teens have their own will and control of their bodies. They do stuff on their own, like go places.

Naturally, America spins these cases of agency with its preferred agenda, which involves "children" being abducted and usually raped by a badman. This narrative appeases the fears of Americans, instilled into them from a young age as part of their national identity - fears of a ravaging and unstoppable force coming from outside to plunder the weak. Since America is a highly individualistic society, with individualism in its core ideology, the idea of capture and removal of the weak among them is a considerable threat, as it upsets the sub-narrative for that ideology. Similar to school shootings. Look at how ICE are behaving, and how this is all linked to propaganda and fear.

When teens "run away", it is presented as an "emergency", because parents are really meant to own teenagers.

"Classical" (never was) abductions are incredibly rare, regardless of how the NCMEC are labeling their latest data. Usually there is some concession to this when you read the first 10% of their materials, but they find new and creative ways to hype the garden variety threat, which is simply teens showing agency and not conforming.

Maybe they all need a Reform UK sugar daddy.

[CantChainTheSpirit]

These figures sound about right, I recall doing a similar search a few years ago where I looked at statistically, how common is it for a child to be abducted by a stranger and it was lower than statistically, how likely is a child going to be born as a siamese twin, it's very rare.

I actually put this to a mother in a conversation and she acknowledged the data and that it was so unlikely as to be approaching zero, but she still wouldn't let her kids play outside because it's still a risk. A very odd outcome because she accepted that it was near impossible but would treat it as highly likely, while treating dangers that are more likely such as road traffic accidents being driven to school as extremely unlikely.

Data and evidence doesn't really shape everyones views.

[Not Forever]

I actually put this to a mother in a conversation and she acknowledged the data and that it was so unlikely as to be approaching zero, but she still wouldn't let her kids play outside because it's still a risk. A very odd outcome because she accepted that it was near impossible but would treat it as highly likely, while treating dangers that are more likely such as road traffic accidents being driven to school as extremely unlikely.

If I wanted to justify her, I could say that current kidnapping rates are so low precisely because of this anxiety about kidnappings, so in order to keep them low, you have to stay on high alert. But… well, it would then be interesting to know what the situation was like before this anxiety spread.

But I suspect that this problem is basically negligible. The number of murders of minors seems to be around 1,300 per year, suicides around 2,800, and so on. To be clear, I wouldn’t want anxiety to arise about the idea of being killed or of one’s child committing suicide (because I honestly think that would cause more problems than anything else). But if we’re talking about priorities, or where to invest one’s limited resources to solve problems… according to ChatGPT, 4,800 minors die from illness each year. Investing in healthcare seems far more beneficial for everyone.

(Then there would be the question of whether 5,000 cases are really that many. The problem with these numbers is that they are always discussed in relation to millions of people.)

[CantChainTheSpirit]

If I wanted to justify her, I could say that current kidnapping rates are so low precisely because of this anxiety about kidnappings, so in order to keep them low, you have to stay on high alert. But… well, it would then be interesting to know what the situation was like before this anxiety spread.

But I suspect that this problem is basically negligible. The number of murders of minors seems to be around 1,300 per year, suicides around 2,800, and so on. To be clear, I wouldn’t want anxiety to arise about the idea of being killed or of one’s child committing suicide (because I honestly think that would cause more problems than anything else). But if we’re talking about priorities, or where to invest one’s limited resources to solve problems… according to ChatGPT, 4,800 minors die from illness each year. Investing in healthcare seems far more beneficial for everyone.

(Then there would be the question of whether 5,000 cases are really that many. The problem with these numbers is that they are always discussed in relation to millions of people.)

Stranger abduction accounts for less than 1% of abductions, and abductions themselves are low. One statistic I found was that stranger abduction is about 1 in 720,000. I just had a look for data over time and it looks pretty consistent since the 1990s (I haven't looked further back).

In 1999, of all missing children reports, 0.014% of cases were strange abductions. By 2017, the statistics are roughly the same.

There are different sources for stats but they all seem to show the same overall picture, that stranger abduction has always been very low and hasn't really changed significantly over time. But children get less exercise, less social interaction and so lose out on so much as a result of fear.

[Not Forever]

So all this money invested, all this social panic, all this anxiety from parents and from the minors themselves… for nothing. And then maybe they even complain that minors shouldn’t be on social networks—so what are they supposed to do? Sit for hours and hours on the couch staring at the television or at the wall?

This whole thing unsettles me, and honestly the behavior of organizations that profit from this stuff should be considered criminal.