Overusing useCallback and useMemo in React
2025-07-28
This article discusses the overuse of `useCallback` and `useMemo` in React development. The author argues that in many cases, these hooks are used to achieve referential stability, but this is not always necessary and can even lead to performance overhead and code complexity. The article presents several scenarios, such as when components aren't memoized and when props are used as dependencies in effects, where using `useCallback` and `useMemo` provides no performance benefit and adds unnecessary complexity. The author suggests avoiding overuse of these hooks unless there's a clear performance bottleneck and recommends using refs or the upcoming `useEffectEvent` to handle referential stability issues.
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