Ok you’re not wrong that the UX of many of those apps isn’t great, but you should still try and stay on top of that stuff. Banks aren’t going to accept “bad ui” as a valid excuse for a shitty credit score when you want a mortgage, and your parents won’t when you fail out of college. Also, anecdotally, points back from things like airlines are pretty nice as long as you’re going to be flying anyway. Sure it’s not worth it if you’re choosing an airline or route just for the points, but over time they’ll add up even if you just collect the points from your normal travel. This is a bit of a unique situation, but for example I’m getting a round trip to Europe, possibly business class, for $71 in taxes, because the person I’m going with flies very frequently for business but still gets the points from those comped flights.

Essentially, don’t discount point systems, and please for the love of god fight through the bad UX when it comes to actually important shit like college and banking.