I don't think Facebook backing Parse is relevant. React Native was designed by Facebook, so I'm assuming they understood the design choices of the mobile ecosystem at the time.

Parse was an acquisition by Facebook that didn't end up working out.

I'll add that we use RN in our production apps and are building it for ourselves but never used Parse in the same way.

Definitely using this over Evernote. This will come in handy when writing notes for any programming courses as well.