My dad is getting ridiculously hard of hearing, but still won't wear the $5000 or of hearing aids that have been purchased for him over the years. I printed the article for him to read. He has always had ridiculously good balance, but has gotten unstable over the past couple of years. It might just be a coincidental part of getting old, but the "hard of hearing people fall down" part was interesting.
As for me, I did some stupid stuff lack of hearing protection-wise when I was <20. After I started working, it was in jobs where they were big on things like hearing protection, and it started me off on "good hearing behavior" that I've continued to the present.
Nevertheless, it appears the dumb stuff I did as a kid came back to bite me. I still hear what I would say is well, but do have problems with a lot of background noise. I have a clock on the wall at my computer desk that I can hear ticking in the next room over on a quiet evening. Yet if people are talking in a normal voice in a loud room, forget about it. Also, weirdly, TV has gotten harder to understand of late. That might be related to how the sound is created (e.g., background music muffling voices), but I often have the CC running just so I don't have to pause to repeat some important dialogue that I've missed.
Also, I've had the tinnitus going for probably a good 15 years now, but it's only started getting "irritable" in the last year or so. Before I could always just shove it to the background. Now sometimes it shoves back.