Title is misleading. Not getting excited about a new Next.js version doesn't mean you don't care about new technology. Maybe it just means that you don't feel like reorganizing your code or something. Relatively speaking it's still an incremental upgrade to your approach overall.

I am 45 and stopped caring much about new web frameworks many years ago. It's not that I don't find them interesting or even advantageous in some ways, I just don't feel compelled to bother learning in detail about most of them. Although I usually do look into them enough to get the gist.

You just can't pick up every single new thing. If you try then you won't ever get any real work done.

But some things you really have to take notice of. And this is subjective and usually not one right answer. For me, image and text generation was something I felt compelled to jump into.

A big part of this calculation is also social. If you are looking to pick up contracts or jobs, your choice of technology is important. And often picking up the latest trend will make that easier.

It really depends on the technology and what it offers you. I would say that getting familiar with the OpenAI API provides much more bang for your buck (depending on what you are trying to do) versus upgrading Next.js versions. That's much easier to get excited about.