forum What should i do if im worried about an online friends wellbeing?

Started May 30, 2022 by @ElderGodSeeba petsbing bing 🐸

tune

Hello Friends,Im a tumblr user mostly in The Outsiders fandom, and I've met a good friend through this. I've only known him for a week or so, but we've connected over trauma and I consider them very dear to me. This person is quite suicidal and has tried to kill themselves once before, and is known to self-harm. It has been 2 days since I heard from them, which doesn't seem too long, but we talked daily, so I'm pretty worried about them.
Previous to them disappearing, he and his family had a run-in with the police regarding abuse allegations about his father, and his mother had begun looking into having him move in with his grandparents. From what I could gather, he had just gotten into a fight with his parents before disappearing, his late message to me following a few hours later, a simple "I love you".
My hopes are that he has gone into the custody of the state or with his grandparents and has no access to his phone, but I'm severely worried and would like to have someone check up on them.
I don't know his name, but I know they and turning 13 in June, live in a small town in Iowa and owns the accounts
My biggest problem is that I am Australian, and I have no clue what I should do to check them. Should I contact Iowas police force? is there anything you can do to help? Im willing to go to great lengths for his, but there's only so much a little 17-year-old girl can do. 

hi !! if you know your friend's address and/or full name, yeah, contacting iowa's police force should work.

I dont know any of that, i have their tumblr account though, could that help with anything?

To add, the verbiage for what you probably want to ask for is a "wellness check", which typically is just a (friendly) visit from the police to check in on someone's health. It might be hard if you don't know his name, but the dispatcher can probably take whatever information you have and work with it, especially if you have any information that can narrow down which small town it is. In criminal cases they could subpoena Tumblr for identifying information, but they probably wouldn't have cause to do so otherwise, so they'd rely primarily on the information you can provide.

Ill look back through our messages to see what information I can find. Ive contacted Tumblr as well, maybe they can give a phone number or email to police or something?

would it be worth contacting my local police and asking them what I should do? maybe kidhelpline?

I think ive found his town based on the movie theatre he was going to

yeah if his tumblr account is all you have to go on- i'm not sure there's a whole lot you can do
but that's good !! if you at least have his town that's better than nothing