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Comment by qxmat | Hacker News Reader

I worry that the plasticity of my brain is decreasing as I age. I've begun to notice that my attention is increasingly difficult to manage. I haven't blamed HN (yet) but I certainly emphasize with the author.

Tangentally, as a young adult I had severe ADHD/ADD. I stopped taking meds for it after is ceased causing a negative impact on my life towards the end of puberty. Sometimes I wonder what would happen to my personality and creativity if I started meds again. Would I be the same, gain an unfair advantage or excel at things I've given up on?

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I don't think HN can necessarily be to blame. It might just be one of those "you're getting older, so think things were different when you were young" things, but I certainly feel I have a shorter attention span and have to try really hard to pay attention for extended periods. I don't know what to blame, but suspect that the attention economy is part of it. It could also be that I'm both a programmer and a gamer, so my brain now expects to be stimulated a lot of the time.

Also, just in case it's one of those words that you've been mixing up (rather than a typo), I thought you might appreciate knowing that it's "empathize with", rather than "emphasize with". I had that for the longest time with not knowing that the spoken and written versions of "awry" are the same word...

Thanks - I had no idea they were separate words!

I feel the same way, but it's not only HN - it's also Reddit (endless dopamine fixes), youtube (at most 10 minute videos), and my daily work routine (code / review / merge /etc, three Slack spaces, Discord, messenger, etc) - it's a lot of small distractions day in day out, which I do believe affects your attention span.

That said, my girlfriend was diagnosed with ADHD not too long ago and has been using medication, which greatly helped her focus and balanced out her mood. In your case, you can always go and talk to a professional, get advice on e.g. medication. Don't be afraid you'd get an unfair advantage, it can make you feel like a normal functioning adult again.

Addressing my ADD as an adult was an incredibly positive experience. I highly recommend it.

I am not sure this is age related, it may be down to the internet as a whole. Things like reddit/YouTube etc did not exist 10 years ago and really have come alive in the past 2-3 years. It’s so easy to churn through content mindlessly these days.

> Things like reddit/YouTube etc did not exist 10 years ago

Remarkable :-)

It's fascinating how people think of the age of things.

Quite a few people think of Python as recent. It's hip, it's popular. But it's 29 years old. 29!

Go and Rust feel shiny and new. Talk about them feels recent, like they came out just a few years ago. They're like "challenger" languages. Yet, both are 9 years old. Aging challengers.

I bet Hackernews feels older than Reddit. Am I right?

But Reddit is the older brother. HN is a miniscule 12 this year, compared to Reddit's creaking 14.

Did YouTube and Reddit exist 10 years ago?

Yup! YouTube is 14 as well.

So when did they become wildly popular? When did all the mindless content arrive?

I'm not sure about Reddit. But some argue YouTube went viral, entering its exponential growth phase, 12 years ago. Commercially, they had already achieved their VC "exit", selling to Google for $1.65B, 13 years ago.

This stuff is old :-)

See? A great comment buried in HN. So much for OP! (Haha only serious ...)

Thanks!

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