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Comment by empath75 | Hacker News Reader

Burnout for a 15 year old is when you’re tired of playing counterstrike and switch to overwatch for a little while.

Teenagers experience burnout all the time, this is not exclusive to adults. They have a ton of busy work thrown at them if they want to excel academically and the competition to get into good schools straight out of high school is a lot tougher than getting a good job or transferring into those schools. Clearly the OP has set a much higher bar for themselves as a teenager than most of us ever did. I think most of the comments here criticizing him are just people bitter they didn't have the grit to do it when they were the same age.

Thanks for the positive comment. I think the same thing.

Considering the username, I'm surprised this comment felt necessary. The feelings and burnout of a 15 year old is just as legitimate as those of any adult.

It may be that the level of stress that will cause burnout is lower, but that should be expected for someone who is young and learning to cope with the challenges of work. Not all 15 year olds have the same lives or problems, and it's quite insulting to trivialize OP's experiences based on your own assumptions.

I completely agree, thank you.

Anecdote, but I've known 3 people that would constantly label themselves an empath. 2 of them had very strong sociopathic tendencies, or utter disregard for others (that hey weren't trying to get in the pants of).

One of the big and impactful decisions I made in my life so far was to remove video games completely. I actually don't play video games at all.

True. When I was 15 my parents had to sell my "gaming" computer because of our tough financial situation. I had to make do with an old computer thereafter. Of course, I was angry but that ultimately forced me to learn programming.

I am now 17 and I now realize that if it wasn't for that situation, I would still be gaming instead of learning a valuable skill.

Many people don't realize gaming can be a futile addiction like anything else.

It could also be a 15 year old who started suffering from a debilitating musculoskeletal chronic illness at age 11, without parents who gave the slightest shit about them and zero community support, still trying their hardest to get through the hardest classes their school offers and doing the shadiest shit they possibly can to make money to feed themselves as it's illegal to work at that age.

Broaden your horizons, Mr. "Empath"...

Please don't respond in the flamewar style, no matter how wrong another user is or you feel they are.

If you're sharing personal experience, that's of course completely welcome, but in that case please frame it that way, rather than as an attack on someone else.

Edit: you've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines in previous comments a ton. We ban accounts that do that. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.

It could be, but it also isn't true.

What do you mean by this? If you misinterpreted, I wasn't referring to you.

Or do you think something like I've stated doesn't/cannot happen?

Meant this to be an example of other ways "burnout" can happen.

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