since KF attracts a lot of reactionary cultural warrior types, small rhetorical distinctions in various topics tend to be thrown out in favor of rabid moralizing and frothing at the mouth. I know this thread is a fucking trap but the OP has asked an earnest question so I want to respect his effort with an earnest answer. that said, I will lead with the following disclaimer: obviously I do not morally approve of fucking kids, nor do I accept that drawn pedophilia is an acceptable outlet for real pedophiles, nor do I agree that there is no link between drawn CSAM and real pedophilic tendencies which may lead to real child abuse. we are now leaving moral spergery at the door and exploring this subject academically. if you do not approve, leave your trash can sticker at the door and go away.
to start: the issue of precisely how media and real-world behavior interact is difficult and, I believe, very poorly understood. in fact I believe the precursors for human behavior generally are very poorly understood. the human mind seems fundamentally unable to fully understand itself. that's the first data point to stick to the board here.
that's not to say there aren't correlations between types of behavior and media consumption habits. for example, being a furry doesn't make you a dogfucker, but a suspiciously large number of dogfuckers have some degree of intersection with the furry subculture. so, which came first? which one feeds the other? is there a deeper, unseen root that feeds both of them? if you managed to tear one of them out of somebody's brain, would the other fall out with it? these are deeply individual questions and unanswerable without conjecture. so here's my conjecture.
for starters, I think that not all types of media are able to influence behavior to the same degree. for example, somebody with an affinity for gun violence is not likely going to get a deep level of satisfaction out of something like a conventional video game. clicking at pixels on a screen is nothing like killing a real living thing with a real gun. for one, the tactile experience of handling a firearm is something that's very difficult to satisfyingly replicate outside of the real thing (and it's not difficult to get a real gun anyway). but more poignantly, even in the most violent games, truly realistic depictions of death are so rare as to be effectively nonexistent, as the overwhelming majority of people find it deeply unpleasant. you would not want to play a game where shooting somebody was followed by them realistically suffocating on their own blood, or rolling around on the ground screaming, or going into convulsions as blood and gray matter gushed out of the hole you just punched in their head. so somebody who has real murderous urges would more likely be drawn to much more niche media like snuff rather than the kind of violent media the average person engages with.
sex media, on the other hand, is pretty close to the real thing. in fact, I would argue that sex media is better than the real thing in particular, important ways. it's true that just jerking yourself off isn't the same kind of physical stimulation as real sex. but let's break down the actual psychological experience of sex. to my mind, three things emerge as primary components: mental stimulation (context, environment, the idea of the sex); visual stimulation (sexual stimulation you get just from looking at things); and physical stimulation (the actual physical friction). all three of these things influence each other and different people have different affinities for each. some people get a lot from mental stimulation (fetishists, i.e. BDSM types, who only get their best nut in highly specific situations), some from visual (i.e. people with specific visual fetishes like big tits/big ass, lingerie, etc). but there's only so much you can do with the physical aspect. I would argue that although it is undoubtedly the core of the experience, it is actually the weakest of the three components, and a lot of people lean on the other two to make the experience more interesting. and this is the dread power of sex media: it is extremely good at both mental and visual stimulation. in fact - much like a deep sea documentary likely interests you because you have no ability to go there yourself in any form - sex media can bring you mental and visual stimulation you will probably never experience in your real life. more importantly, sex media can bring you idealized versions of mental and visual stimulation that are not nearly as pleasant in real life - for example, depictions of incest. this is the great Pandora's Box of pornography. idealization is the juice the human psyche runs on. the level of idealization of sex that's only possible in sex media is the root of the so-called "addiction" exhibited by people who engage with it regularly.
drawn sex media, however, is one step beyond - through the proper use of artistic technique, it can activate the same pattern matching components in your brain that cause visual stimulation, while also bending the rules of reality, opening possibilities for a level of mental stimulation not achievable by simple photographs or recordings. idealized body types don't need to be sought out or created through surgical intervention. the only thing required is a few strokes of a skilled artists' hand. context and story can be created on a whim; acting skill isn't necessary or even relevant. as with any artistic medium, a whole fantastic reality can be poured onto a page and brought to life with nothing more than a little ingenuity and technique. you can even create a reality where - for example - a prepubescent child can enjoy sex, perhaps even to the point of soliciting for it... perhaps even to the point of enjoying being raped.
humans always want to project their expectations on reality. those expectations overwhelmingly tend to be idealized simplifications or impressions of reality. these expectations also tend to be inherited from other people, perhaps with some personal modifications, but the seed, at least, was planted by an interaction with somebody else. the idealization of sex in sex media represents one such interaction that may or may not result in such a seed-planting. here we come to the previously mentioned difficulty of parsing the relationship between emergent behavior and media consumption. however - although this is by no means an absolute certainty - it is not so difficult to imagine that somebody might develop pedophilic tendencies by pursuing pleasure through sex media, absorbing a lot of idealized notions about having sex with children, to the point where they're unable to resist indulging their curiosity when given an opportunity to. it is also, in my opinion, a complete no-brainer that people who have already given themselves over to this kind of behavior are absolutely using drawn CSAM to further idealize their own favored acts in their mind. like the killer mentioned above, I would expect real pedophiles who have actually fucked a child or who are actively trying to would be more drawn to real child pornography (deviancy and taboo are a big part of the thrill), but the two are not mutually exclusive, like dogfuckers and furry art.
tl;dr: violent media does not make you violent, but sex media does make you perverted.
W: Young Japanese boys are sent off to monasteries to be instructed by monks only to be groomed and trooned into their sex slaves into adulthood. This was normalized in ANCIENT JAPAN. 
