Amber Alerts mobilize fear, but experts say alarm fatigue is making people tune out warnings

When Amber Alerts blast across phones in the middle of the night, public reaction is sharp and divided. Some people search for the missing child; others resent being woken and question why they received it. Experts say the latter response has less to do with empathy and more to do with how the human brain responds to emergency warnings.

"In principle, everyone agrees Amber Alerts are a great idea," said Dr. Janine Hubbard, president of the Canadian Psychological Association and a clinical psychologist with Pediatric Psychology Services at Janeway Children's Health and Rehabilitation Centre in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. "The alert mobilizes your body's emergency system. It wakes you up. Your adrenaline starts going. It's the same type of activation as a tornado warning or an evacuation order."

But problems arise when people are forced into emergency mode without knowing what action they can take. "'You've mobilized me, but there's nothing I can do.' That creates frustration in some people," Hubbard said.

According to Canada's Missing website, Amber Alerts are issued only when police believe a child under 18 has been abducted, is in imminent danger of serious bodily harm or death, and when there is enough descriptive information to assist the public in locating the child. However, public expectations often don't match reality. For a majority of Amber Alerts, the abduction involves a non-custodial parent or someone related to the child, said Jacob Westfall, chief technology officer with Alberta-based public safety company PEASI. "If the public decides this does not fit their model, that immediate disconnect can happen. People receive an alert and think, 'Police sent this directly to me because I can rescue this child,'" he said. "If it's four o'clock in the morning or the child is a thousand kilometres away, people immediately wonder why they received it."

In reality, stranger abductions are extremely rare. Yet Hubbard was surprised to learn that most Amber Alerts are triggered not by stranger kidnappings or children wandering away, but by custody breakdowns. Police do not issue Amber Alerts simply because a custody order has been violated; there still has to be an imminent, real danger to the child. "There has to be an immediate concern for serious harm or death to the child. That could involve access to weapons, substance use, severe mental illness, or someone experiencing psychosis," Hubbard said.

One reason people criticize Amber Alerts online is the limited information provided. "The more incomplete the information, the more people fill in the blanks themselves," Hubbard said. "People don't like uncertainty."

A growing phenomenon known as alarm fatigue — when people hear emergency alarms repeatedly, they stop paying attention — compounds the problem. "It's wildfire alerts, tornado warnings, weather notifications, smoke alarms — eventually the brain begins tuning them out. People become more likely to dismiss an alert before they've even processed what it says," Hubbard said. "That's concerning because the stakes are high."