lodash debounce in React functional component not working

To add onto Tholle's answer: if you want to make full use of hooks, you can use the useEffect hook to watch for changes in the filter and run the debouncedLoadData function when that happens:

const { useState, useCallback, useEffect } = React;
const { debounce } = _;

function App() {
  const [filter, setFilter] = useState("");
  const debounceLoadData = useCallback(debounce(fetchData, 1000), []);

  useEffect(() => {
    debounceLoadData(filter);
  }, [filter]);

  function fetchData(filter) {
    console.log(filter);
  }

  return <input value={filter} onChange={event => setFilter(event.target.value)} />;
}

ReactDOM.render(<App />, document.getElementById("root"));

debounceLoadData will be a new function for every render. You can use the useCallback hook to make sure that the same function is being persisted between renders and it will work as expected.

useCallback(debounce(loadData, 1000), []);

const { useState, useCallback } = React;
const { debounce } = _;

function App() {
  const [filter, setFilter] = useState("");
  const debounceLoadData = useCallback(debounce(console.log, 1000), []);

  function handleFilterChange(event) {
    const { value } = event.target;

    setFilter(value);
    debounceLoadData(value);
  }

  return <input value={filter} onChange={handleFilterChange} />;
}

ReactDOM.render(<App />, document.getElementById("root"));

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/lodash.js/4.17.11/lodash.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/react@16/umd/react.development.js"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/react-dom@16/umd/react-dom.development.js"></script>

<div id="root"></div>