I think it's even bigger than that: until comparatively recently (the past few decades) it seems like the mainstream view on like middle age suburbanite men creeping on teenage girls wasn't meaningfully different from the view on adultery from them in general. That is, negative because it's adulterous sex and not because they're preying on a child. Hell even as recently as a decade ago the "well, it's legally not porn" lewd shots of underage girls were still considered as respectable and normal as porn in general: reddit built its name on subs dedicated to sexualizing teenage girls, among worse subjects.

So you've got generations of men socialized to see teenage girls as acceptable objects of lust, with an obvious intersection with the general culture of men feeling entitled to any and every treat they want even when that treat is control over someone else's body. Throw in how many men are sex pests in general and how this gets worse the more untouchable and powerful they feel and the scope of the problem starts to become clearer.