In this video, I talk about a very common pain point in React apps: the prop drilling problem. Up to this point, we’ve seen the core React idea—data flows from parent to child through props. And when multiple components need the same data, we lift it up to the closest common parent and pass it down. That pattern is solid and you’ll keep using it, but it starts to break down as your component tree gets deeper and more realistic. I walk you through a dashboard example where user data (name, role, theme preferences) starts off simple: pass it to Header and Sidebar. But as the UI grows—Header renders NavBar, which renders UserMenu, which renders Avatar—the user prop gets forwarded through multiple “middleman” components that don’t even use it. When you zoom out to a full tree with multiple branches, most components are just carrying props for the few components that actually need them. From there, I explain the two big issues: maintenance (adding something like user email forces changes across every component in the chain) and performance (prop changes cause unnecessary rerenders in components that don’t use the data). The takeaway is simple: there has to be a better way to share data without dragging the whole tree into it—and that’s exactly why React Context exists, which is what I cover next.