In the summer of 2024, Gwinnett County saw at least 22 unsolved missing persons cases of young people. Of those cases, 16 were confirmed to be of Black or Latino descent. My friend was one of them. I first heard about her case in a conversation with my Mom. The news struck me hard; a knot of dread coiled in my stomach as the reality sank in. I had seen missing persons posters my entire life, watched movies where people vanished without a trace — but I could have never imagined something so terrifying happening to someone I knew so well.
I immediately turned to the internet to learn more about her case, hands trembling slightly as I desperately typed her name into my search engine. But instead of finding more information on her disappearance and how to aid search efforts, I only found more and more names on the county’s Facebook page, many of them belonging to young Black and Latino teens. Just one post for each victim, consisting of their name, age, and a picture if lucky. Nothing more. No updates until they were found, if they were at all.
With each click of my mouse, bringing in repetitive information, I grew increasingly frustrated. Some missing teens were listed in a Fox 5 Atlanta report (although some had misspelled names and others lacked accompanying pictures), but no additional information was provided elsewhere. This appalled and confused me. Why were the big news outlets falling short when we needed them most? Weren’t they supposed to be shining light on these critical issues, keeping the community informed, and spreading awareness? Why were they so silent now?
Weeks passed without any significant updates. I asked old classmates if they had heard anything from her and continuously checked the police department’s Facebook page for new information, but there was silence. Just as I thought my friend’s case had been abandoned, people took matters into their own hands. Friends and family rallied on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, giving passionate calls to action. They wouldn’t let her story go untold. They continued to speak out until she was eventually found safe later that year. I reached out to her for comment on her case, and she did not want specific details to be mentioned in this article.
I was overjoyed and relieved to hear the good news, of course, but I was still worried for the many others who were still out there. Some families weren’t lucky enough for their social media posts to gain traction, and others don’t have access to the internet at all. If Black and Latino youth make up the majority of the missing youth population, then why are they receiving the least media coverage for their cases? It is unfair that they have to rely on unforgiving social media algorithms while others have access to the large platforms of news outlets.
The growing number of Black and Latino youth disappearances in Gwinnett County is a reflection of an alarming national trend. For example, Black and African-American children make up 3-3.3% of the U.S. population, while Hispanic and Latino children make up about 5.4-5.6%. These groups make up a relatively small portion of the country, but account for approximately 37-40% and 23-26% of missing youth cases, according to the Black and Missing Foundation in 2023 and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) in 2024, respectively. Additionally, in 2023, the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) reported approximately 563,389 missing persons cases in the United States. In each age category, Black and African-American people were the second-largest group of victims behind white victims, which is inaccurately represented because Hispanic and Latino victims are also included under this group. A Noticias Telemundo report found that in the years 2003 to 2023, 1 in 3 missing children under 12 were Hispanic.
Despite accounting for the majority of missing youth, Black and Latina girls get little media coverage compared to their white counterparts. “We are met with silence when we reach out to media outlets for coverage. We want our missing to be household names, too,” Natalie Wilson, Co-founder of the Black & Missing Foundation, declared when addressing the issue. Of the coverage Black and Latina girls do receive, their stories are often minimized or manipulated to portray them in a negative light, such as labeling them as runaways or troublemakers. The phrase “Missing White Woman Syndrome” has been used to describe this disparity, highlighting its significant growth and impact on cases.
“I feel like it could be due to racist and hateful beliefs spread due to the demonization of people of color (POC) by a certain group of people,” said Gwinnett student Karinna, a rising senior, when asked about the severity of the missing Black and Latino teen epidemic.
How does inequitable media representation impact our youth today? “The Differential Representation of Latina and Black Female Victims in Front-Page News Stories: A Qualitative Document Analysis,” a 2017 report, suggests that if a story is covered in the media it can “influence perceptions about their worth as well as the actions taken by criminal justice officials,” especially since they are “more inclined to work to solve a case if it has received media coverage.” Additionally, it is difficult to find specific information on missing Latino children because they are classified as white in many missing persons databases: “whether a child is Hispanic or not is an optional entry in missing children police reports,” leaving little to no representation for them in statistics because it is hardly used in practice. The lack of public awareness of the growing number of Black and Latino children going missing may be a significant factor in why so many of their cases go unsolved. This disparity can also lead Black and Latino youth to feel as though their lives are less valuable, their disappearances less urgent, and their safety less prioritized by society, eroding their trust in media outlets, law enforcement, and the very systems that were meant to protect them.
Jason, another concerned Gwinnett student, shared his perspective. “I saw that a lot of the missing persons reported were White, and I have reason to believe that there’s unevenness in the reporting system, too,” he admitted. “I honestly feel like the vestiges of racism and discrimination are still haunting everyone here, even in a place as affluent as Gwinnett County.” Jason pointed to an increasingly polarized society that might make Black and Latino families “afraid to turn to authority to solve their case.”
After finding these statistics, I felt fearful for America’s communities of color. With no reliable, official missing persons database and media outlets turning a blind eye to many disappearances, things were beginning to look hopeless. When I reached out to the Gwinnett County Police Department to suggest an update to the official website that included a public database, representatives responded that “the rules regarding the use of [the] website are beyond the department’s control,” also citing incompatible budget plans.
As Jonathan Franklin says in an NPR report on racial bias’s effect on missing people of color, awareness is “literally life and death — the amount of media coverage you get immediately after you go missing has a direct result on what happens to your case,” so proper action from the government is crucial for the safe return of missing youth.
Jason had more to say about social media’s reliability in missing persons cases. “There [have] been groups and awareness created on social media websites for posting those missing souls, but I think that more needs to be done to address this issue. This, I believe, must be a solved issue if we want to advance forward as a society, to ensure peace of mind for all the friends and family of those missing.”
