Viral 'Social Experiment' Parenting Video Peddles Outrageously False Claims About Stranger Danger

No, strangers don't grab 700 kids every day
Lenore Skenazy
Free Range Kids
May. 05, 2015

I like the way the producer, a YouTube prankster, mind you, sells it as a PSA and writes under the video, "One Share can save a child."

It's the guy's ticket to fame, just like the "How Does A Homeless Man Spend $100?" scam "experiment" and the dozens of other scam-artist YouTube "viral video makers" who've realized they can exploit peoples' good intentions for personal gain.

Hopefully, once these videos have finally run their course and people stop falling for such bullshit they'll become immune to politicians pulling the same such stunts. - Chris, InfoLibThis purportedly helpful video, posted Saturday, is viral in every sense of the word. It already has nearly a million views, which means that people are sharing it like crazy, convinced that its creator, Joey Salads, is doing something other than creating terror and angst with his Stranger Danger "social experiment."

He's not.

The experiment consists of Salads asking parents at a playground if they've taught their kids not to talk to strangers--a lesson I don't endorse, since most strangers are good and you want kids to feel confident asking them for help if need be. "You can talk to anyone, you cannot go off with anyone," is the advice I prefer.

Mr. Salads proceeds to startle the parents by showing them that their kids do talk to strangers. He does this by going up to very young kids (kids so young they would normally not be at the park unsupervised) and asking them if they want to meet his puppies. Some go off with him.

Not addressed are a few salient facts, including the biggie: Isn't it more than likely that these kids feel fine going off with this man because they just saw him talking to their mom? What's more, their mom is right there! If she didn't want them going off, she would intervene.

After this bizarre scenario that he calls an experiment--without ever telling us how many kids he approached who did not go off with him--he says 700 kids are abducted a day. But Salads curiously omits the fact that this statistic includes all abductions, the overwhelming majority of which involve family members and often include custody disputes that were resolved by police in a matter of hours or days. Salad's video, on the other hand, is designed to warn parents about strangers, who abduct just 115 children a year, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

If 700 kids were actually grabbed by strangers on a daily basis, that would be closing in on 1 percent of all kids under age 9. So if you sent your kid to a grammar school with 500 kids, by fifth grade your child would have witnessed 25 kids--a classroom's worth--kidnapped the way they are on "Law & Order."

Read More