Silver Alert

Silver Alert is a public notification system in the United States to broadcast information about missing persons – especially senior citizens with Alzheimer's disease, dementia, or other mental disabilities – in order to aid in locating them.

Silver Alerts use a wide array of media outlets – such as commercial radio stations, television stations, and cable television – to broadcast information about missing persons. In some states (specifically Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, North Dakota, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin), Silver Alerts also use variable-message signs on roadways to alert motorists to be on the lookout for missing seniors. In cases in which a missing person is believed to be missing on foot, Silver Alerts have used Reverse 911 or other emergency notification systems to notify nearby residents of the neighborhood surrounding the missing person's last known location. Silver Alerts can also be used for children who are missing without being in danger or abducted.

Supporters of Silver Alert point to the United States' growing elderly population as a reason for new programs to locate missing seniors. Approximately 60% of dementia sufferers will wander off at least once.^[1]

However, a 2012 review of research into missing-senior programs found that Silver Alert had not been evaluated to determine whether it was effective in returning those people to safety, or even whether wandering was a severe enough problem to merit expending resources to address it.^{[2]: 22, 24} It characterized Silver Alert's rate of facilitating returns of missing people as "[i]mpossible to tell", because the statistical records are distributed among state agencies which do not necessarily publicize them.^[2]: 21 The researchers also criticized it and similar programs for prioritizing safety over civil rights such as autonomy, and noted that broadcasting a missing person's identity might put them at risk for exploitation (such as identity theft).^{[2]: 23–24}