In April 2021, dozens of viral videos circulated on the social media platform TikTok, shared by young women offering dire warnings about abductions at Target stores. The videos, typically hashtagged with phrases such as #sextraffickingawareness, were seen tens of millions of times.

 “If you’re seeing this—stop scrolling, especially if you’re a female!” one video began. The woman said that she and her female friends were shopping at Target when a man approached them asking if they were models. They got suspicious and brushed him off, but he kept watching them and “hid” in the onsite Starbucks café, at which point she asked store security to safely escort them to their cars. The story ends with a warning, “So ladies, please be careful. It happens way more often than you think.”

Another woman seemed nearly gleeful as she described “Almost potentially being sex trafficked at Target!” and states very matter of factly that “Apparently Target is now a sex trafficking hub.” She described an older woman and her daughter who approached her in the store, then started talking to each other (presumably about her), and then followed her around the store and then out to her car.

A third related an incident that she claimed had happened five years earlier, in which she was approached by a woman who gave her a business card she felt was suspicious and suggested they meet for coffee. Becoming alarmed, she said she ran into a dressing room and “Googled [the information on the card]—and it wasn’t anywhere! Not a real thing. So if this happens, call security and have them walk you to your car.”

While fear spreads on social media, authorities have found no evidence that Target stores are a hub for any criminal rings. In an article on the topic in Rolling Stone, E.J. Dickson quotes the executive director of an organization fighting sex trafficking, Jean Bruggeman, as saying, “I have never heard of a case of anyone being abducted from Target in my twenty years in this field.” Of course with nearly 2,000 stores nationwide, by random chance some assault or attempted abduction may happen at a store (or more likely in a shared parking lot) at some point, but there’s no reason to think the stories shared on social media are true as described.

The rumors are in some ways similar to child abduction rumors that circulated in July 2020 when online furnishings retailer Wayfair was accused in social media posts of trafficking children through listings of products with inflated prices and common names. The bizarre and baseless idea was that seemingly overpriced listings for pillows and cabinets were somehow evidence of a child trafficking scheme. However, the Wayfair rumors were more of a factual claim, and the Target stories were presented as what folklorists call memorates, or first-person accounts of allegedly true events—along the lines of an urban legend. Target is only the latest of many settings for abduction rumors; parking lots have long been targeted as well (for more see my News and Comment “Zip Tie Abduction Rumors Spread, Lead to Panic and Arrests” in the November/December 2020 SI).

So if these stories almost certainly didn’t happen, why are people saying they did? The motivations are mixed. Some of the women may sincerely have experienced some concerning interaction at a Target store. Others may have reframed previous ambiguous experiences in a new and sinister light, encouraged and influenced—as well as psychologically primed—by other similar accounts on social media. Still others may be doing it as part of a copycat or bandwagon effect, where they see others getting attention and decide to join in with their own story (true or not). Perhaps the biggest factor is the most obvious and the one that assures that urban legends will always be repeated: the incentive to tell a sensational and dramatic story. These viral videos garner attention and sympathy, but even more important, they are rewarded in the ultimate social media currency: Likes, Shares, and Followers.

It’s a relatively safe way to get attention; the stories are typically generic, with few identifying characters (though occasionally a specific Target location is mentioned). There is little or no follow-up or investigation. Police are rarely mentioned partly because the events described didn’t happen: the would-be victims were almost abducted, nearly captured. Instead they were safely escorted to their vehicles by store security (though you’d think that protocol would require a call to police if anyone involved genuinely believed an abduction was happening) and rescued.

Because no police report is filed, there’s little danger of anyone being accused of filing a false report. There are, however, other concerns. One is that these rumors create needless fear and anxiety, especially among women; there are enough genuine threats that people don’t need to manufacture them. These false rumors also distract from real dangers. Wealthy, mostly white women posting on social media are in far less danger of being abducted and trafficked than people of color, runaways, addicts, and others. People are at far greater risk of being abducted or assaulted by someone they know than some sinister stranger lurking in the housewares department at Target.

Folklore, and urban legends specifically, reflect society’s fears and concerns, both about women’s safety and more generally. Interestingly, the threat in these videos is not clearly gendered; in over half of the videos I saw, a woman was identified as the threat—perhaps making it all the more scary for the audience, because it’s not a stereotypical creepy male lurker but instead a friendly fellow female hiding sinister motives.

These rumors are given some measure of credibility by prominent, real-life accusations of sex trafficking, for example by New England Patriots football team owner Robert Kraft (dismissed in 2019); Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell; and Florida Representative Matt Gaetz. And, of course, there’s the sex trafficking hysteria fomented by QAnon (see Stephanie Kemmerer’s recent articles in this magazine). Taken together and fueled by a latent Stranger Danger panic and the enduring appeal of “scarelore,” it’s not surprising that these abduction rumors are making the news. As is often the case with these social media scares, people share them not only for entertainment value but out of a sense of altruism. They may in fact be skeptical about the truth of the claims but dutifully share them assuming that it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Though most of the rumors don’t identify any specific person as being an attempted abductor, it does happen—and there have been many incidents in which false abduction claims have targeted people of color. For example, in December 2020 in Petaluma, California, a prominent social media influencer named Katie Sorensen claimed that a man and woman tried to abduct her two young children at a craft store. Like with the TikTok videos, she took to Instagram to tell her harrowing story and in the process named a Hispanic couple who were Christmas shopping nearby and had no interaction with her. The couple’s photos, taken from surveillance footage, circulated on social media, and the couple were contacted by police, who after an investigation determined that Sorensen had falsely accused them (for more on this see “Social Media Maven Mom Falsely Accuses Hispanic Couple of Abduction Attempt” at https://tinyurl.com/55ahx24m). Sorensen was charged with two counts of false reporting in early May. As always, critical thinking and media literacy are the best antidotes to fearmongering.