Does a social media post about "50 missing children in Virginia" accurately report a spike in the number of minors who were missing in early August of 2025? No, that's not true: The post misrepresents the data. According to local police, there is no such spike, and the number of reports per week was a little lower than average in early August 2025.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) published on TikTok on August 12, 2025, under the title:
Now 50 MISSING CHILDREN IN VIRGINIA IN THE LAST 10 DAYS!!!!!What is happening!!!
In the video, the woman said:
Update on the all of the missing children in Virginia right now. It has now gone up to 50 missing children in the last two weeks. If you read this, it says something is happening in Virginia.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of a post by the @tkay7411 account on TikTok.com)
Local law enforcement, however, refuted the claim. It published a statement (archived here) that read:
Virginia State Police is not investigating any reports of mass abductions in Virginia, nor is there evidence of mass abductions occurring in Virginia.
It continued:
Here is the data:
- Last week, Aug. 3-9, 2025, 88 children were reported missing to the MCC [Missing Children Clearinghouse].
- The 2025 weekly average of missing children in Virginia is 98.
- Since January 2025 to current, a total of 3,274 children have been reported missing to the MCC. Of these, 141 (as of 10:30 am Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025) are still missing or approximately 4%.
On August 15, 2025, Virginia State Police public relations coordinator Matthew Demlein replied to a Lead Stories inquiry with an updated press release that clarified that the figure of 88 missing children reports "does not mean 88 missing children" because a child can be entered more than once. Out of that total for the period between August 3 and August 9, 2025, "nine remain missing."
The updated press release offered a comparison with the past year:
- From August 2-11, 2024, there were 115 missing child reports. Zero remain missing. From August 2-11 2025, there were 129 missing child reports. Sixteen remain missing.
As of this writing, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children listed 34 cases from Virginia for the period between August 1 and August 15, 2025.
