In internet anime communities and real life cosplay events, I have met some young girls (like, about 12-14?) who refered to themselves as 'lolis', and the creepy part was that there were actually grown adults who entertained this idea. Calling them cute/sexy lolis and whatnot. The ideal hunting grounds for someone who wants to groom a child, in my opinion.
I think that if we normalize that in some parts of the media it is totally normal behavior to sexualize a child or even your own nine year old sister (even if it is just animated) and these fictional children want this, you will also create an environment in which people can say a lot more fucked up stuff without others thinking 'wow, that is a red flag. It would be better to avoid this person. He/she might be a pedophile and an actual danger to underage members of our community.'
I will never forget the moment when a group of adult men at an anime convention, around 25-30 had a loud conversation about how homosexuality is actually the same as pedophilia, they can't understand why one is legal and the other isn't. They can't help being attracted to cute lolis, and if the girl wants it too, well... And their friend group just saw this as 'heehee these guys, so crazy, am I right? They are such pervs.'
Or when some dude told me (without being sarcastic) how much he hates his younger brother and how he wishes he had a cute loli sister instead who would fall in love with him. And he called me a prude when I said that I found this creepy. No one else who was around saw a problem with this.
I think when it becomes more available, it will not create more pedophiles, as I think these guys were always creeps, but I am afraid that it might:
-normalize talking about fucked up stuff as if it was normal, and create environments/communities where people don't see obvious red flags because they see it as normal/a joke or just being a bit quirky. This can be dangerous, especially for young people.
Many of the girls I met didn't realize until later how fucked up it was that some grown adults were sexualizing them so much, they just enjoyed the attention and thought it was normal, because the anime they watched and some parts of the community treated it as normal.
I wish that you could have a conversation like 'Oh, this guy seems to be an actual creep, he told me fucked up stuff, is always around underage girls and all he talks about is loli hentai.' would result in people taking a closer look at that guy and trying to protect the more vulnerable members of the community, not in people saying stuff like 'wow, do you want to tell me that loli hentai CREATES pedophiles? are you stupid, these kids are just fictional.' and so on.