Must we really apply real-world moral standards to our media consumption? It seems a bit... manipulative? You know -- to put content warnings on this? Like, I expected way worse. Maybe it does get worse in a follow-up, though. Hope not!
I think you might be mixing up general content warnings with the subset of content warnings sometimes referred to as
trigger warnings. 'Normal' content warnings can largely be skipped on MD, because the tagging system will generally tell you based on the tags present. The issue in cases like this specific one is that this type of content is considered extremely sensitive from a
mental health perspective -- there are many people out there who have past traumas (e.g. actual victims of grooming/child abuse) or other mental conditions that could be related to the subject matter at hand, and for those people, having graphic depictions of such content sprung on them out of the blue can potentially trigger a trauma relapse (hence why it's called a "trigger" warning in the first place). That's why content warnings for such thing are appreciated, and including them is just a matter of being considerate -- even if perhaps it dulls the overall experience for more neurotypical individuals who might prefer to go in completely unaware.
An alternative that might be more palatable is to include a
nonspecific content warning, which warns of potentially triggering content without specifically describing what it entails, although I imagine most affected individuals would appreciate more specificity.