It all boils down to viewing children as something other than people. They are commodities, they are consumers, they are victims, they are perpetrators, they are hoodlums, they are brats, they are carers, they are statistics.

As long as the powers that be (corporations, governments and religions) view people of any age as something that benefits the respective group instead of the other way around then children will continue to be abused, used, coerced, etc.

People think child prostitution is new. It is not. Been around since the Hammurabi. And legal* in some western civilisations as late as the 1900s. Children in brothels were inducted into the trade at pretty young ages.