It’s easier to print things and you have clear instructions telling you why it’s important.
The key here is thinking about relative risk: many people get compromised by reusing passwords or being phished every day compared to the number of people who simultaneously lose all of their devices and recovery codes.
One confound is that many people don’t own a personal printer because they have access to one at their library, job, friend’s home, etc. and that’s fine for something you do once and likely never use over your lifetime.