It can speed up the loading of the above-the-fold content because the images on the rest of the page can be loaded as the user scrolls closer to them.

You can do this with just the 'loading' attribute on img elements and let the browser handle it without the gratuitous animations:

   <img loading="lazy" src="image.jpg" alt="..." />

So you agree that for text, it should NEVER be used. And you are only arguing for lazy loading of images?