Most consumers of entertainment seem to prefer live-action to animation. Why do you suppose this is?

When I think of The Little Mermaid being made into a live action adaptation, or for One Piece on Netflix to be going through the same transformation...I wonder why we have such a push to make things that were cartoons/anime into live action adaptations. For example, you could argue that One Piece (as my "go to" example of this phenomenon) is already reaching its audience. It is the 3rd most popular show on Crunchyroll, and it airs on American cable every Saturday. But here's the thing.
Cartoons and anime reach a fraction of the audience that live-action properties do. For instance, recent episodes of One Piece have brought in around 2.39 million viewers on live television. That's a lot of people, but in comparison HBO's House of the Dragon which was a Game of Thrones spinoff, was regularly averaging over 25 million viewers per episode. For the spinoff of a show with a legendarily bad ending, this is phenomenal (the final season of Game of Thrones averaged over 40 million viewers per episode).
So it is apparent that there are other levels of recognition that studios who pump out animated films/cartoons might be reaching for. In other words, they want their property to have some esteem that exists without dismissal, because "comics and cartoons are for babies." To be more succinct, if you want your story to be taken seriously, live-action is where it's at. And it seems like it always will be. It's not fair or right, but it just is. I do wonder though as to why this happened? I mean...why is everything that is animated associated with "being childish?" And why do we heap so much legitimacy on a film that features live actors?
Maybe the answer is that animation when it is shown without promotion has bright colors that tend to be attractive toward kids. If we see a lot of kids gravitating toward a show, then it is probably natural for us all to begin to associate that show as being "childish." And maybe another answer is that live-action can offer a sense of realism that animation just fails at doing.
Anyone else have any opinions on this? Are you a person who prefers live-action to animation? If so, I'd like to know why.