What is the first thing I have witnessed many people do upon receiving one of these alerts on their mobile phone?

Do they take to the streets in the hopes of tracking down the child abductor at large?

No.

They immediately do a google search on how to turn the AMBER alerts off.

These are important, and potentially life-saving messages.

Yet, due to a single design decision, they are likely one of the most ignored or unreceived notifications.

The problem is simply that the sound which accompanies them is scary and startling as hell.

The Attention Signal

“The Attention Signal most commonly associated with the system was a combination of the sine waves of 853 and 960 Hz, an interval suited to getting the audience’s collective attention due to its unpleasantness on the human ear.”

The sound which accompanies an AMBER alert on mobile devices is known as The Attention Signal. It’s the same one used in the “Emergency Broadcast System” tests that are heard occasionally on local Radio and TV stations.

This tone was designed to precede urgent, potentially life-saving broadcasts about large scale threats.

These types of events are typically rare, and the only time the alert would be broadcast would be moments in which rapid action is required.

As such, for myself and others, this type of tone is associated with an emergency along the lines of a natural disaster or similar imminent threat.

Both this cultural association with the tone, and the quality of the tone itself lead this alert sound to be very startling, unpleasant, and even fear inducing.

The choice to use this tone undifferentiated for both large-scale emergencies and AMBER alerts alike is a design decision that undermines the efficacy of these notifications.

Why am I being scared right now?!

So why is the use of the urgent and jarring emergency broadcast tone innappropriate for AMBER alerts?

Plainly, it doesn’t match up with the percieved purpose of an AMBER alert.

I think it is safe to postulate that many perceive that the goal of the AMBER alert system is to disseminate information about a child abduction, so that the general public will be primed to recognize and identify a suspected individual or vehicle. Thus, the assumed practical application of the system is to inform, not urgently call for action. However, the alarming and intrusive tone communicates just the opposite.

This is why so many people reflexively seek to disable the alerts.

It has nothing to do with people not caring about child abductions.

It has nothing to do with people not wanting to be informed about AMBER alerts.

People rush to disable these alerts because they feel like the alert system is crying wolf. The cultural models of what the Attention Signal represents, and what an AMBER alert entails do not match up.

When you are awoken at 3:00 in the morning by an AMBER alert for a suspected abduction 45 miles away, you feel startled, irritated, and all for no good reason.

Why did you need to be immediately awoken for this information?

What are you supposed to do with the information provided by the alert?

In that moment you have no practical means of utilizing the information provided.

This results in the AMBER alert feeling like a false alarm.

Just text me.

As a possible solution:

If AMBER alerts arrived through the same notification and message application as text messages, I believe not only would people be less angry at the alerts, they would retain the information better.

There’s no need to sound the startling Attention Signal.

People already watch their phones for incoming text messages like hawks.

If the AMBER alerts arrived just like any other text, people would surely see the information, and be able to process it without any negative emotions involved at the time of receiving the alert.

If AMBER alerts were delivered in this manner, people in a position to potentially identify the abductor would recieve the information. Meanwhile, people asleep or otherwise not in a position to make use of the information would still have it delivered to them, but would not be unnecessarily flustered or alarmed.

Everybody wins, except child predators. Which is great! ^_^