I'd much rather have a backup system in case they don't do the right thing in case they panic.

I'll also point out that your advice here is statistically unsound: there's the baked in "stranger danger" element - "approach a police officer/approach someone who works at the store". See, no one wants to say "approach literally the first adult you see" because "stranger danger"...but statistically, there aren't a lot of predators around. The longer a child is unattended with no one helping them, the more time an active predator has to spot and isolate them.

But no one can put that extremely small risk that literally the first random adult in a major shopping center is actually going to be one, so we always qualify the advice with "find an authority figure preferentially" (increasing the time they're alone and obviously unattended).

Also, I think "victim blaming" isn't an apt term in this case. Getting lost is almost never caused by someone being victimized, it's caused by lack of attention and then lack of a way to resolve the situation on your own.

I think that's a bit of an uncharitable take. If the commenter upthread hasn't sat down with their kid and talked through a plan for if the kid gets lost (including having them memorize names, phone numbers, and addresses), then that's negligent on the part of the parent. But no one is saying "if you've done this, it will work 100% of the time, perfectly, and you'll never have anything to worry about".