There were about 400k juveniles (under 18) reported missing at some point during 2019. But there were only about 30k “active” missing juvenile reports by the end of the year. Why? Because most of them are found pretty quickly: Teens who ran away, kids temporarily lost or taken by parents in custody disputes, etc. And, of course, many (probably most) of those 30k active reports as of December 2019 would, in turn, be found by the end of January 2020.
A fraction of those, of course, are real cases of stranger abduction. But it’s nowhere near 460,000.
If you look at the original FBI statistics these numbers are derived from, you see why it’s misleading.
https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/2019-ncic-missing-person-and-unidentified-person-statistics.pdf/view
There were about 400k juveniles (under 18) reported missing at some point during 2019. But there were only about 30k “active” missing juvenile reports by the end of the year. Why? Because most of them are found pretty quickly: Teens who ran away, kids temporarily lost or taken by parents in custody disputes, etc. And, of course, many (probably most) of those 30k active reports as of December 2019 would, in turn, be found by the end of January 2020.
A fraction of those, of course, are real cases of stranger abduction. But it’s nowhere near 460,000.