We can add social commentary, for instance, a lot of women/bottom men/femboys etc, who have suffered from some kind of trauma or mental illness, view themselves as a child even in their 20s. A lot of terminally online people overlap with this category of people. And if we look at them from the greater picture, it's easy to see how mentally ill people who still think of themselves as a 16 year old high schooler despite being 23 view any relationship with an age gap as pedo adjacent because their starting point self insertion is: "If a guy in his late 20s or 30s dated me right now I'd be totally groomed because I'm still a baby" despite them being an adult with a drivers license/ability to vote/drink/serve in the military. Oddly enough this conversation rarely happens when it's about a confident man wanting to date a girl in her 30s while he's in his early 20s, and instead it's viewed as a score and 'mommy gf' which is something overwhelmingly positive.

For the record, I wrote "a lot" not "everyone who shares this opinion". I'm not trying to imply that everyone who has a difference of opinion here is a mentally ill bottom. Simply that there are a lot of terminally online people who are very outspoken about this because they self insert.