I'll give a you a personal example where my home automation gear saved my bacon.
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About a month ago I bought the Hubitat Elevation home automation hub ($69.99 on sale), mainly for some lighting and switch control. I also bought several of these Samsung moisture sensors ($17 each) to put under all my sinks. So about two weeks in I get an iPhone alert the guest bathroom leak sensor is showing "wet". I check, and sure enough, all wet in the cabinet under the sink from a slow drip at one of the water lines. This is a guest bathroom where we go weeks at a time without looking in that cupboard, so I'm thinking I would have had a a lot of water damage by the time I finally noticed the leak.
So yes, some of the home automation stuff is doing it just because you can and it is fun, but there are also things that can have real utility like my leak detector example.