The Amber Alert has a problem. CBS News Texas investigates why Texans are tuning out.

Over the last 30 years, the Amber Alert has evolved from a system reliant on broadcasters and billboards to one capable of reaching you in the palm of your hand.

"When it first came out, you would have had to catch it on the radio or, you know, at your house, " said Alan Nanavaty with the National Center for Missing and Endangered Children.

The alert was inspired by the 1996 abduction and murder of 9-year-old Amber Hagerman in Arlington, Texas.

"That's the biggest case I ever worked on," said former Tarrant County sheriff Dee Anderson. 

He worked for Arlington Police at the time, coordinating communication with the media.

"The whole town, and really the whole metroplex, took it very personally," he said.

He remembers a local radio station getting a listener's letter with a novel idea.

"You know, it's a shame we can alert people when a tornado or a thunderstorm is coming, but we can't alert people when a child's been abducted," he recalls it saying. "We sat around a table and said, 'Let's try to make this happen.'"

The Amber Alert has since been credited with saving nearly 1,300 children.

Its increased use here in Texas, though, has Anderson worried.

Too many alerts? Texas' increased use of the Amert Alert

"I'm troubled," said Anderson, "by the way that it seems to be used so often and not for the reasons we designed it to be used for."

Between 2016 and 2024, the number of Amber Alerts issued tripled. By 2024, the state was issuing more than a quarter of them nationwide. 

It had 54 that year.

The state with the second-highest number of alerts, California, had just 16. Florida had 9; New York had 2; many had none at all.

When CBS News Texas asked people on the street, some admitted that it's become a little irritating.

The sound of a Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA), the system used to deploy the Amber Alert, is designed to be jarring. The Federal Communications Commission has warned that the tone is for genuine emergencies only and has issued six-figure fines to broadcasters it has determined to have misused it.

The fear is that if you hear it too often, you'll start to ignore it.

Here in Texas, though, there's evidence that a lot of people already do.

Research shows Texans are turning off wireless emergency alerts

A study published in 2024 by RAND, a non-profit research group, found 29.5% of Texans turn off at least one type of wireless emergency alert, the highest opt-out rate in the country.

"Texas just leaps out at you as at the high end of it, and it's 5 or 6 times the rate of some other states, like Vermont," said Andrew Parker, a senior behavioral scientist at RAND who worked on the study.

In some counties like Dallas and Denton, the study estimated between 30% to 40% of people were opting out of alerts.

The most common type to turn off was Amber Alerts.

Researchers, though, also found what appeared to be a "spillover effect" with Texans opting out of other public safety alerts at higher rates, too, including those involving imminent threat and weather warnings.

The pattern was true in other states, too.

Those that have historically issued more Amber Alerts, Parker found, were also those with the highest WEA opt-out rates. 

Something else stood out, too, about the way the Amber Alert was being used.

"A disproportionate number of those Amber Alerts are issued statewide," Parker said.

In most states, he said, alerts are sent out across a smaller region, specific to where a child went missing.

Texas, more often than not, he discovered, was sending them to the entire state.

"And because Texas is such a large state, it really begs the question of relevance to everyone. If you're in El Paso, and this is something that's happening in Texarkana, that's like being in Maine for something that's happening in Virginia," he said.

Amber Alerts criticized for lack of detail

Another problem, retired Sheriff Anderson points to, is the lack of detail in some of the Amber Alerts the state has issued. 

"If you don't have anything for people to look for, then there's no reason to put the alert out there," he said.

CBS News Texas reviewed more than 200 alerts from the last five years.

Forty-eight percent had no vehicle information. 

Twenty-eight percent had no information on what children were wearing when they disappeared.

Anderson, though, knows it can be hard to say no to a family wanting to put out an alert for their missing child.

"It's just easier to say 'Yes' than have a parent breathing down your neck, yelling and screaming, 'You got to do it. You need to do this for my child,'" he said.

In the alert's early years, Anderson says, a board made up of law enforcement reviewed every activation to make sure it met the necessary criteria:

• that a missing child is in immediate danger
• that a preliminary investigation had verified their abduction
• that there be sufficient information to disseminate to the public.

"If it didn't, then we talked to the chief or the sheriff, whoever was in charge of the law enforcement and said, 'Hey, look, this probably wasn't the best time to use it," Anderson said. "When I watch today, I don't think that standard is being upheld."

In Texas, the Department of Public Safety oversees Amber Alert activation.

Multiple requests CBS News Texas sent for interviews went unanswered, and so did questions on why the Amber Alert is activated so widely and so often.

The alert's continued evolution

Advancements in technology have been viewed as a major benefit to the system.

"What we found really has been the benefit in the growth of the Amber Alert has been its ability to involve technology and to really make it available to what we call the mobile public," said Nanavaty, who oversees the NCMEC's Missing Children Division. 

The alert, he says, has continued to evolve, as the agency has formed partnerships with hotel chains, truck stops and social media channels, like TikTok, to find new ways to get information out.
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Its annual reports on activations have also tracked trends, shedding light on the alerts' use and allowing law enforcement to see how to best respond.

Learning from past experiences, Nanavaty said, is how first responders searching for missing children have learned valuable techniques, like checking water bodies first, especially in cases involving those with special needs.

Tracking Amber Alert trends

In 2024, most children featured in alerts nationwide were abducted by family members (61%), with a father (32%) or mother (26%) being the most common culprit. 

The most likely motive was a custody battle (31%). 

Criminal activity (10%), online enticement (5%), and sexual motives (2%) were far more rare. 

Being with family, though, doesn't mean a child is safe.

Two children featured in Texas Amber Alerts within the last five years were murdered by a parent. 

There is abuse of the alert, but it remains relatively rare.

Over a recent five-year span, 4% of Amber Alerts nationwide were determined to be hoaxes, where people intentionally misled law enforcement. 

Another 8% were categorized as "unfounded," where children were discovered never to have been in danger.

Despite any flaws the system may have, research by the NCMEC found 29% of children featured in Amber Alerts in 2024 were recovered because someone saw the alert.  So no matter where you are or how many alerts you get, advocates for the missing hope you'll still stop and pay attention.

"Be a hero. See what you can do and contribute in order to help find that child," said Nanavaty.