Yep, and a lot of backup software will use them (along with file size, and other stat() fields) to determine if a file has changed, so backdating them can actually lead to silently stale backups
Just browsing an old photo collection without making any changes can cause a 15 year old file to show up as a "new file", even though it's contents have not changed. This is especially true with media files that the os might take it upon itself to regenerate metadata for.
Or you may wish to store an accurate snapshot of the timestamps of cached or intermediate build artifacts.