Why do those little red badges announcing WordPress plugin updates bother us so much? For me, they do not. Across well over a thousand WordPress sites I have looked after, I hold firm on one rule: only update a plugin when there is a real security hole to patch or a genuine improvement to gain.
Here is why
Most WordPress owners, the ones making the occasional blog post or managing a small shop, simply want a working website. That constant "update required" nag pushes the average person well out of their comfort zone. Worse, it makes it feel like massive repairs are needed at all times, which is not the case. Blindly batch-applying every pending update is one of the surest ways to break a site and make it unusable.
What even is a plugin?
Quick step back. WordPress is an open-source platform you build websites on. That is it. Plugins are third-party "convenience" modules that extend what WordPress can do. So when your plugins want updating, the real question to ask is: will this be compatible with my current theme and my version of WordPress?
If you cannot answer that with confidence, take a full backup of your site before you touch anything. If you do not know how, your hosting provider can make one for you.
Is it really that serious?
No. Most of the time you are perfectly safe updating the occasional plugin. But when you are staring at ten, twenty, or more pending updates at once, slow down and use caution before you bulk-update the lot.
Developer's advice
Before any batch of updates, take a full backup and update one plugin at a time, checking the site after each. Ten extra minutes turns "my site broke and I have no idea why" into "it was that last one," and you just roll it back.