Metokur said in one of his recent Sunday streams about people who want to have relationships with like children, not even like 14 year olds that he wondered what they would talk about, ie like are you just gonna have conversations about hello kitty? The intellectual difference between kids and adults is vast, which makes it really hard to believe its for the companionship.
Typically, the way pedos groom children and teens and talk about interests when they want a "relationship" with the child is a very narcissistic one (hardly surprising). The pedo thinks about things they were interested at when they were a similar age, or just beyond the age the target is at now. They expose the child to various media -- music, movies, etc. -- that the target will tend to see as a little bit mature but
very influential. So you give a 12 year old boy who's into superheroes an Alan Moore comic, or you target a lonely 14 year old girl with The Cure and The Smiths.
Now there's a shared interest base that you can talk about, and the "best" part for the pedophile is, they can influence the kid into thinking exactly what they do about the piece of media in question. They get to form someone in their image, who will be totally into taking in whatever stuff their new awesome older friend shows them and who now becomes a mirror for all the ways
they think about these same pieces of media. The mirroring seems to be highly important to a lot of groomer types, since maybe a lot of what they get off on is someone who is "just like them" when they feel like a misfit or outcast. After some initial media exposure, the pedophile may take things further with overtly sexualized media, or may just move the relationship into a more sexualized place while on the surface staying with "safe" subjects.
For them, it's important that the target not have any opinions too far different from their own, and that they make them see things from their perspective as soon as possible. Both of these priorities are enacted for both psychological and practical reasons, since kids are less likely to turn someone in that they feel like is the only person in the world who really understands them.