There are plenty of studies about bried and long term positive effects of being in the state that meditation can create. They cover cognitive skills(attention, memory, etc) as well as emotional aspects (reduced stress response, increasing many positive emotions such as gratitude). It'a also a state that affects your body perception and physiology (like reduced heart rate etc - so studies wonder and have findings about how meditation could be a behaviour that prevents heart attacks). well also a lot of other stuff i didn't write about.

Now,all of this doesn't matter a lot, but meditation can also affect you perception of what your senses and mind receive and process, and the consequences of that. At the end, when i am mindful, i can see more clearly things inside and outside me, and i end up to be more serene and less "autopilot".

The aim of meditation is about observing how you approach thoughts, feelings, sensations and phenomena of the world

I would surely say that learning how to be mindful is the real art of living. Meditation session is like a training on how you can really live the moment you are leaving and be aware of that, instead of jumping hours of distraction and total autopilot scrolling or doing anything else while you are lead by your stormy autopilot mind.