We've had a pretty active mesh where I'm from but I see this very similarly to ham radios. They are great for specific scenarios but not terribly useful in everyday life. I still have my meshtastic node powered on but I rarely connect my phone to it to check things. When I do, there aren't that many nodes that are active.

Overally, I'd say it's great if you can afford cheap hardware and/or want to build but you aren't going to get much daily use out of it.