For a new user who has never used Bitcoin before (or barely knows about it), isn't it easier to start out with a paper wallet and then moving on to an airgapped one? The latter sounds more complex to be used. I'm only talking from a new user's perspective, not from ours.
Again, I'd argue the opposite. I think paper wallets are one of the hardest to set up properly and securely, and one of the easiest to go wrong with. Lots of people create them on a live website, or an offline website on an internet enabled device, which is hardly much better. Even turning off your internet doesn't do much, as any malware can just send whatever it needs to next time an internet connection is re-established. You need, at a minimum, to download and boot in to what is probably an unfamiliar OS for a newbie, and create your paper wallet on that. You also need to remove traces of the wallet from your printer. After you've made it, it is pretty unique among wallets in that you can lose all your coins permanently if you don't set up your transaction properly.
An airgapped wallet, on the other hand, can be a simple as installing Electrum (or similar) on an old laptop, and creating a watch only wallet on your main computer.
Having said all that, for brand new newbies, I'd probably suggest a hardware wallet in the first instance, since you can just follow the instructions to use one and they require very little technical know how.