Usually a confirmed Internet prankster, Joey Salads, took on a more serious when he conducted a social experiment in an American playground.
Armed with a cute puppy, Joey, approached children and engaged them in conversation. The experiment was to see if he could convince them to take his hand and come with him “to see more puppies”, and the results are pretty scary.
Each child took little persuasion and appeared to go quite willingly. Some detractors have pointed out that the children could’ve seen him speaking with their parents. This may have reinforced the idea that he was ‘safe’ though others argue that abductors have employed many varied and conniving strategies to trick children into trusting them.
With this experiment, Joey aims to encourage communication with children regarding their safety and bring home the point to parents that an abduction can happen in seconds. While there may be flaws in his premise – unfortunately, he does not share how many children he involved in his research or how many refused his offer – but it is still worth bearing in mind when educating our kids.
