I see articles like this and it makes me long for the days when the relationship between teachers and students was much more formal. Teachers weren’t the kids “friends” and they weren’t hanging out together. The teachers were more mature and it didn’t occur to them that a 15 year old or 16 year old was material for a sex partner or dating relationship. Or if it did, huge social pressures stopped them from doing anything about it.
Don’t get me wrong, except in certain cases (for instance a 19 year old boy and a 17 year old girl or other close in age relationships), adults who have sex with underage kids have mental issues and/or are immoral and perhaps even evil. But I do think that the air of informality breaks the line between student and teacher and contributes to it.
And frankly I don’t recall a lot of teachers in their 20s when I went to school. Most of them were middle-aged.