Light bulb challenge: What is this dangerous new social media trend?

A doctor has warned against the so-called light bulb challenge, which involves a person trying to fit a 10cm-long sweet in their mout.

Social media users in China have been buying giant light bulb-shaped lollipops and sharing photos of themselves attempting to fit the sweets in their mouths, BBC News reported.

At 6cm in diameter and 10cm long, the sweets are the same size as the average household bulb.

In the run up to Christmas, popular online store Taobao has sold over 2,700 of the sweets, which cost around £4 each and is currently out of stock, according to Shine.cn.

Doctors have warned people against attempting the trend.

Dr Xiao Cheng told Xibu Online that the bulbs risk causing "choking and even suffocation". "Mechanical injury" of the jaw – where it becomes dislocated or broken – is also a concern, as the average jaw can only open to around 4cm wide.

The trend follows the "rotating corn challenge", where people attempted to eat a corn on the cob attached to the end of an rotating drill-bit.

One video appeared to show a man drilling away his front teeth by mistake.

"This is very dangerous!" one user wrote beneath the video, according to Mail Online.