Hoax missing boy post uses picture of animal rescue volunteer in Philippines

Posts claiming that a photograph shows a five-year-old boy who has gone missing after leaving home on his bike have been shared in Facebook groups. But these appeals for information are hoaxes. 

Full Fact has seen examples of these posts in community buy and sell groups in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland, and Lethbridge, Canada.  

The posts both use exactly the same text which says: “Help!!! MISSING Child!! #Gawler

My grandson Josh only 5years old went out on his bike earlier today and he still hasn't returned.He doesn’t know where he’s going, new surroundings.There is a silver alert activated on him. Please help bump this post so we can get him home safely!! [sic]” 

We have written before about posts shared thousands of times on Facebook which used almost exactly the same text, but instead described a five-year-old girl named Sophia.

In these posts, the location of the appeal was identified with a hashtag in the post. This appears to also be the case for the posts about the missing boy Josh, but in both the posts the location is tagged as “#Gawler”—a town in South Australia. 

It is likely that the hoax post was previously shared in a Facebook group serving this community, but Facebook users resharing the hoax in other locations worldwide failed to change the location in the hashtag. 

There are several other indications that these appeals are not genuine. Through reverse-image searching, Full Fact found that the photo of the supposedly missing boy appears to have been taken from 2014 news coverage of a boy called Ken Amante from the Philippines.

Then nine years old, Ken became the subject of viral online coverage after using his own pocket money to feed stray dogs. Articles published at the time said he planned to open  his own animal shelter called the Happy Animals Club, which still appears to be operating today. 

Another indication that the Facebook posts are not genuine is that the comments on them are turned off. It is extremely unlikely that anyone genuinely searching for information online would limit the ways in which they could be contacted, especially if they were trying to locate a missing child. 

Finally, the posts also refer to a “silver alert”. This is a way of notifying the public about missing people who may be elderly, have dementia or other conditions and which only operates in the US. It is not used in the UK. 

Full Fact has previously checked many different posts on Facebook buy, sell or trade groups which falsely raise an alarm for other missing children, abandoned infants or injured dogs. These posts are often edited later to promote property listings, with comments frequently disabled, so other social media users are unable to identify the post as a hoax. 

This may cause local community groups to become overwhelmed with false information and potentially result in genuine missing and lost posts being ignored or—perhaps worse—dismissed as fake. We have written to Facebook’s parent company Meta expressing these concerns and asking the company to take stronger action in response to this problem. 

It’s always worth checking whether content is real before you share it. We have written a guide on how to verify online images which you can read here.