Lenore Skenazy, in her excellent book “Free-Range Kids” explains how we got the Stranger Danger Panic. Here’s a link to a podcast about the same thing, which goes into fascinating detail about it as well. https://www.buzzsprout.com/1112270/3884039-stranger-danger . 1)

We never recovered from that hysteria, despite the fact that crime fell precipitously from the early 90s to today. As the mania continued protecting our “kids” became more and more important. https://youtu.be/12J1f0Zqaqw 2)

as a result the age at which we thought “kids” were old enough to do all sorts of things rose dramatically. https://youtu.be/3BPjj5nNc9Q 3)

In a sex-phobic Puritan society like mine, of course, sex is feared the most. Adult-child sex has always been taboo, but over the last fifteen years teenagers got stripped of their adult status and reclassifed as children. https://youtu.be/5YaOKkdOCjQ 4)

Well-meaning people believe that hordes of dangerous sex predators seek out teenagers to sexually abuse, and they’ve also convinced themselves that teens have such terrible useless brains that they are easily manipulated. So they’re defenseless. https://youtu.be/GIrTW5OE2ck 5)

Nobody worries very much about real pedophilia for one simple reason. 6-year-old girls don’t have sexual fantasies about men who are 20 years older than them. 16-year-old women, however, often do. So taboo meets reality, and the result is a lot of acrimony on social media. 6)

By redefining the word child to include lots of post-pubescent people aged 13-21 they by default redefined pedophilia to include attraction to fully developed people who have secondary sexual characteristics, adult sex hormones, and adult sex drives. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yNjdt7h3UA 7)

To dismantle this chain of unscientific nonsense is very easy. BUT… taboos are special. A taboo is unspeakable. NO ONE is allowed to question a taboo. So there can be no rational discussion of the biological facts, that need to be accepted in order to dispel the panic. 8)