Really I can say that most frameworks are being misused by people who just learn X because it’s cool/new/trendy and everything else is automatically “bad” relative to that framework they learned. So don’t put much credence in claims of X being the best (chances are people didn’t look at Y and Z).

There are certain things react emphasizes which people think is the best thing since sliced bread, namely component based architecture and automagically updating views when there’s a change to state.

Only use it if you find jquery etc to be too painful. If you are fine as is, it’s a nice learning exercise but probably will cause more headache than anything else.