Typically one of the first types of automations you do is presence and motion detection, for simple things like turning off lights when no one is home, turning on lights when you enter a room.
Then you find edge cases like wanting the lights to turn off when you're in bed, but not turn on if only one person gets up in the middle of the night.
If you want to automate any of these things then it's necessary for the system to see the events.
In my experience, people say it's all worthless, until they experience it themselves.
I have smart outlets for my christmas lights so they turn on at sunset, and that's about as far I want go.
"Unnecessary" is entirely a judgement call. Anything more than alligator clips (to make the connection latching) on bare wires to dis/connect the power to the light is arguably "unnecessary".
The whole point of the automation is so you don't have to remember to do it. I'd still have to remember to open the app, or slap the smart button, or whatever. Rolling over to slap the smart button doesn't disrupt my descent to sleep as much as walking out to the kitchen to turn off the light, but it is more disruptive than just falling asleep. This is to say nothing of using a smart speaker, and dealing with the 1-2 punch of waking up enough to say "turn off kitchen lights", and dealing with the consequences that spring from my kids' special sensitivity to my and my wife's voices near bed time.
Again, this isn't for me, but I fully understand the need.