People on your network can view your messages. Your ISP can view your messages. Any government agency can view your messages.
If you use encryption, it is not impossible, but a lot harder.
And yes, I use it for personal use.
If you are a little 12 year old living at home and you don’t want your mom to see what you say, well this won’t help, cause a keylogger will get around this because it’s not encrypted until you send it over the network.