WATCH ABOVE: “Are your kids safe?” YouTube star Joey Salads asks in a viral video.
TORONTO – You may be surprised how willing your children are to talk to – and even hold hands with – a stranger.
YouTube and Vine star “Joey Salads” is well-known for pranking, but a social experiment he filmed at a public park has gone viral after he was able to walk away, hand-in-hand, with a child he didn’t know.
The video was published Saturday and, at the time of this writing, has been watched more than 19 million times on YouTube and on Facebook, where it’s also been shared over one million times and has sparked a lot of conversation focused on child safety.
Salads approached each child’s mother beforehand to explain his project.
“How many times do you tell your kid not to talk to strangers?” he asked one woman on a park bench.
“I tell my kid every day,” she replied.
Salads followed up with another important question — “So if I go over to your kid right now, will he or she talk to me or run away?”
“I’m pretty sure she’s not going to talk to you, but try,” the woman said, giving him permission to perform his experiment.
Salads approached three different children, with parental permission, and immediately showed them his dog. He was able to lure them away to see “more puppies” each time.
“Just because you see someone with a dog doesn’t mean you go home with them,” one mother told her son at the end of the video.
Salads finished by posing one last question for viewers. “Over 700 children are abducted a day, that’s over a quarter-million a year. Are your kids safe?”
According to the Missing Children Society of Canada, 41,342 children went missing in Canada in 2014, or just over 113 kids per day.
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