I, and probably many others, wouldn’t have stumbled upon some of the things I have. They thankfully are now only blurry memories to me, even though merely evoking them still is nauseating.
It would also dramatically reduce the impact of much of the bullshit content out there, since words appear to have much less emotional impact than images (and appear to be much less appealing), and thus be safer to society as a whole.
A text-only interface would also be much less useful and much more annoying to use.
To some. My imagination is quite good and as a child I consumed vast quantities of print media. A lot of it wasn't appropriate for a child to consume.
But we’re talking safer, not absolutely, perfectly safest.
Also, how would you compare that to the close-up picture of an Iraqi soldier burned to a crisp by a Hellfire missile, hanging out of the carcass of his scorched vehicle, staring straight into your eyes with his charred, empty eye sockets?
Or suddenly being confronted, at 12 years old, by dozens of neatly aligned child pornography thumbnails after clicking on some unclearly named link when exploring I2P, FreeNet and TOR because "decentralised", "anonymous" and "censorship-resistant" networks seemed "cool"?
There’s a reason crap people’s magazines are full of pictures, paparazzi photos can be worth what they are, and websites with a photo of a smiling human (and a clear CTA) convert better than those without.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Grandma turned puce and dad snatched the book from me, wtf are you reading?
James Herbert’s Rats trilogy. Aged 8.
Warped ever since.
Text is plenty.