I think the concern is less that people will be more likely to do it and more about how people might become desensitised to it. I think it’s honestly healthy that we talk about this as a taboo thing, it shows we have a healthy concern for the protection of children. Little things that cut into that concern could cut into our sensitivity to it, I don’t particularly want people to view crime against children as the same as crime against adults. It used to be ok for random people to clout a kid, mistreatment of kids was normalised and that is still in living memory of some of our Gen X and Boomers. I wouldn’t want to go back on that so I sort of think we should try to be conservative with where we’re currently at. We’d gain very little from it, but stand to risk a lot.

My biggest concern is that if we took away the pedestal of protection we put kids on we could make it easier for capitalists to re-exploit them. People finding mistreatment of children abhorrent plays into our hands when it comes to preventing their labour exploitation from returning.