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Coles shoppers furious over influencer's in-store act: 'Exploiting children'

A social media content creator has been called out over a risky supermarket act.

A furious Coles customer has slammed the actions of a social media personality for risking a serious accident involving a young child.

"Could influencers stop doing this?" the woman wrote on the supermarket giant's Facebook page, calling out the content creator who boasts over 22,000 Instagram followers and regularly posts monetised kids' fashion content featuring her daughters.

The post included a screengrab of an Instagram story showing a girl sitting on the top shelf of the cereal aisle in a Victorian Coles store, with two children's goods brands tagged. "And if they fell off, Coles would be sued," a fellow shopper commented on the post. "Exploiting children for a photo," someone else added.

Child sitting on Coles supermarket shelf
An influencer's post has earned the ire of a Coles shopper for potentially putting a child in harm's way for social media likes. Source: Facebook

Danger for 'likes'

This isn't the first time parents or adults have been slammed for putting children in potential danger for social media likes. TikTok trends, for instance, have been notorious for influencing parents to pull stunts that are intended to be cute or funny, but turn out to be quite traumatising or dangerous for a young child.

Last year, a TikTok trend involving parents filming themselves asking their children to defend them in a "fight with another parent" received backlash for promoting violence in young kids. Another disturbing trend on the same platform involved parents leaving their young children in a room with a ghost filter activated on their device – a practical joke that was criticised by experts for potentially causing trauma in kids.

Although taking a picture of a child sitting on a supermarket shelf isn't a trend, it does follow a similar line of exposing children to potential physical and/or psychological dangers for the sake of likes.

On its website, Coles says it has a "designated safety strategy" to protect their team and customers and urge both to "immediately report any activity, behaviour or product" of concern.

Yahoo News Australia has approached the retailer for comment.

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