Father realized his 4-year-old son got lost after checking social media

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Thanks to the social media, a father found out that his 4-year-old son was "lost and found."

Working far from home, a man surnamed Zhong was shocked after browsing WeChat, a popular Chinese social media platform like Facebook. He saw a "missing boy found" notification shared by others in WeChat Moments and recognized the lost boy as his son who is living with his grandmother in east China's Jiangxi Province.

The missing 4-year-old boy./Photo from news.ifeng.com

The 4-year-old boy was seen walking alone on the street and then brought to a police station by local policemen on patrol.

“We saw him wandering around the street and no relatives came to pick him up,” a police officer told local media.

Photo from news.ifeng.com

The local policeman then posted a “lost boy found” message to look for the boy’s family members through WeChat, which was widely shared by local citizens.

Screenshot of the message in WeChat Moments / Photo from news.ifeng.com

After a while, the boy’s grandmother showed up in the police station and picked him up. It’s her son, who worked in south China’s Guangdong Province, who called and told her the boy got lost. He recognized the boy from a message shared by other fellows, after checking out WeChat Moments.

The boy got lost on the way to find his uncle, who lived close to the boy’s house. His grandmother thought he could find it easily because of the short distance, but things didn’t happen as expected.

This is not the first case that a missing child has been found via social media. An eight-month-old baby boy missing in 2016 Nice terror attack was reportedly found after Facebook posts appealing for help in finding his whereabouts went viral.