Let the curious create and share their creation with the world.
So new developers get thrown in this crazy world where they have to learn a thing that has no real practical use just because they want a job in the field. IMHO, new tools must make things easier for everyone and specially for newcomers, while React seems to make large-scale problems easier but a LOT harder for beginners.
And finding a new job is a problem that we all have from time to time.
Hell, I generate HTML email with React, now. No reason not to; it's great. Simple, understandable tree of reusable components that have understandable data flows--sign me right up.
The biggest problem with it is the initial activation energy of a new project, which is partially solved through create-react-app and largely solved by doing it once in a replicable way. (I've been creating React projects off of the same base for quite awhile now.)
You're way off if you think React doesn't work for anything other than large apps.
I've been bitten this many times where my "little app" grew, and the non-framework code complexity would grow quadratically where I regretted not just using a framework like React in the first place. So when I hear "React is just for large apps", I can't take it very seriously.
Parent said it is overkill, a different thing from what you're reading. And boy, as somebody who doesn't already know it, is that right.