If you’ve been on Facebook for a while, you may well have seen posts that ask you to share an image as a means of garnering prayers for a sick or injured child.
Here’s a typical example:
Transcript:
Please help share to 5 groups on Facebook so she can get as many prayers as possible. Only heartless will ignore without a share.
In this case, the image features a young child with severe cranial deformation.
At face value, it might seem like the person who created the post is genuinely caring and simply wishes to help the child by encouraging Facebook users to pray for her.
Of course, whether or not you think that prayer might help is dependant on your personal beliefs.
But, either way, you would be wise to question the motivation of the people who create and publish such posts.
Almost always, these posts are designed to do nothing more than gather likes for a particular Facebook profile or page. Their creators care not one iota for the pictured children. Their primary interest is self-promotion and they don’t let ethics or morals hold them back. They are quite willing to steal images of sick and injured children from other websites to use in their scam posts. The scammers use the images without the permission or knowledge of the children’s families. In some cases, the pictured children have died.
Often, the same people who publish these prayers for shares posts also create fake charity scams that falsely claim that Facebook or another company will donate money in exchange for liking and sharing. Again, they steal images of children from elsewhere and their only goal is self-promotion.
Some versions may use images of sick or injured animals instead of children. In other cases, they use stolen images of young adults with disabilities.
Please don’t help the disgraceful and contemptible people who use these tactics. Don’t like or share their bogus prayer or charity posts. Don’t comment. Don’t interact with them in any way.
Read More About Sick Child Scams and Hoaxes
