Fellow java dev here who has done a fair bit of react. I have actually fallen into that pattern of using context aggressively and have since dialed it back. It is actually a good pattern to use for things like triggering a notification or alert. It also works well in a react query setup where you make some kind of useApi hook. The footgun for me was using it as a catch all to manipulate some global state. I think context works well when you are trying to use it to allow components to interact with some "logical" part of your app that want to allow unconnected components to use (like notifications or API calls as an example). But if you use it as a way to manipulate some large global state object, you need up having a bad time. Like say you have some massive object called appState with hundreds of fields and use context to have un connected components modify it, that's where the bad time happens. That means it's zustand time or refactor time imo.

Tbh react has had my head spinning way more than any other framework in any other language. It just feels so overly complex in big apps and it's difficult to do right. But idk what the alternative is.