Facebook introduced its “Safety Check” feature in 2014.
Facebook announced Safety Check on October 15, 2014, as a way for people near major disasters to tell friends and family that they were safe. The idea grew from how people used social media after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan to locate loved ones and share updates.
The tool was originally called the Disaster Message Board during development. It identifies people who may be in an affected area and lets them mark themselves safe, check on friends, and see who else has done so. Its first major deployment came after the April 2015 Nepal earthquake, rather than immediately after its launch.
A common mix-up is 2015, because Nepal was the first large-scale use that made Safety Check widely familiar. Another is 2016, when Facebook began testing community-activated check-ins and used the feature during events such as the Brussels attacks. Those were later developments, not the launch year.