Microchipping children “sooner rather than later”

Rumours and theories are spreading across the Internet that claim the microchipping of children is going to happen “sooner rather than later” in the United States.

The rumours seem to have come off the back of an NBC affiliate news report in Tampa, Florida that discusses the possibility of using microchipping technologies – technologies that are already commonly used with household pets – on children in the United States.

In that report, the news reporters speculate on the possibility of using such technologies to help identify missing children, and focuses on one child with special needs that was “prone to to wandering off”. The reports contain interviews with her mother who supports the option of microchipping.

However the article has spurred many rumours and conspiracy theories that the NBC report suggested that microchipping would happen in every child or every person inside the United States, and that it would be mandatory to have a microchip.

This was largely down to the end of the news segment where the onsite reporter made two assertions – that microchipping would happen “sooner rather than later” and that we could “soon see those microchips in everyone.”

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Despite those rather ambiguous and – as far as we can tell – totally unfounded assertions – the news report did not mention or suggest that microchipping children would be mandatory or would happen to every child. The report instead focused on “at risk” children (e.g. children with disabilities) and asserted this was down to child safety.

But of course as with all media stories about microchipping, it has only served to spur unfounded and nonsensical conspiracy theories that the mainstream media are trying to “normalise” microchipping, and that this is simply a push by shadowy elements of the government to initiate a global or national microchipping program where all citizens of a country would require microchipping in order to serve some form of “population control”. Other rumours have simply taken screenshots of the news report and claimed it was a report about mandatory microchipping in all children.

Such theories have been popular in the past. Rumours have previously spread that all citizens would need to be microchipped by 2012 as per Obamacare. A later rumour postponed the date back to 2013, then 2014, another to 2015 and another rumour asserts it will be 2017. Other rumours have previously claimed that newborn babies in Europe will need to be microchipped by 2014, then later 2017. As you can see, each incarnation of the rumours simply just push the date back further to keep them relevant.

As is the case with all these types of rumours, there is no evidence to support any national or global microchipping program that would require all citizens of a country to become microchipped for any kind of control. These are just the usual accusations that derive from conspiracy laden-websites that have barely changed their tune for many decades.

And as many of our readers have already pointed out – why would a government go to so much trouble to microchip us when we already voluntarily carry with us a number of devices that are capable of being tracked – i.e. a smartphone, GPS enabled watch or activity tracker.