Lightroom suggests to backup the catalog once a week. Backups in general should be done by people who value their data, regardless of computer literacy (I know, there are still problems with that). In any case, the only thing you'd lose if Lightroom would corrupt its database would be the edits you did to the images (yes, I'd love to have those in a file next to the photos too, which would allow for far easier backups, especially if photos move around without LR knowing).