As for not talking about kids exploring their sexuality together, we are indeed talking about that, as well as adult/child sexual activity. In the US children are regularly prosecuted for sexual interaction with other children and being sent to prison and required to register for life as a sex offender. These are children as young as 10.

Kids today are way too closeted and dependent upon their parents for everything (street kids excepted). They are unable to socialise responsibly by themselves well into their 20's because they have never been allowed to do so. They can't go to school by themselves, even in High School. They make no decisions for themselves, ever, right up to and often beyond college age. When I was a kid beginning school, aged 5, my mother accompanied me to school on day 1. After school that day, I walked home on my own and from that day on, I went to and from school under my own steam either on foot or on my bike. Before I started school, I had already been trained to cross roads etc. It was expected. My classmates were all the same. Any kid whose parent had accompanied or dropped them at school after that first day would have copped hell from the rest of us.

We made decisions on a daily basis without reference to an adult because we had to with the result that we developed those skills early in life. Today's kids not only don't have to, they aren't allowed to. My 3 kids, now all in their 20's, have well developed decision making skills because they have always been allowed to make decisions for themselves. They still seek our advice on important matters as they always have, but we don't make their decisions for them. In the end, it is always they who make the final decision.

Genuinely consensual sex does not have some mystical power to destroy lives. Sex that is forced or coerced through misuse of power etc certainly can, but even in adult situations, such is considered rape in most civilised countries, but parents should still be very careful about involving law enforcement in such cases. Usually, it is the involvement in the legal process that does most of the damage. The child will have to relive the experience repeatedly by recounting it to total strangers he/she does not know or trust, and that is traumatic enough even for adults.