I’m pretty sure that no, they are different things:

It seems like (since forever) I just get one email the first time someone answers a new question I have asked. I assume this is the Notification feature.

Activity for You I think is just that link on the right that gives a page which I have always thought just lists all the questions I am officially following, in reverse chronological order of most recent answer. (This takes a while (20+ seconds?) to load for me each time the page reloads, so I tend to ignore it – I currently have 2471 “new” Activity for Me).

@Zaku No, “Activity for You” only lists questions you are following that have new activity on them, a new response. I use it all the time to check on threads that have new responses.

If you want a list of all the questions you are following, you have to go to My Accout.

The Notifications, as @Zaku says, was when you got an e-mail that someone had answered one of your questions. It hasn’t been functioning in years.

@janbb Not for me. I endured the delays and plunged to the depths of my 2465 current “new” Activity for Me, and unearthed the point, which I was sure I remembered seeing in the distant past, years ago, where suddenly it switches from telling me about new responses, to just responses. i.e. I see on my mega-section 16 of Activity for Me:

Is the seat belt law defensable?
2 new responses

Questions You’re Following

How do you tell your parents you cut your hair if one side is long and the other is short?
7 responses

I see “Activity For You”, not “Me” by the way. To me it’s always been as @janbb says ” lists questions you are following that have new activity on them, a new response.”

@Zaku I don’t understand. How do you check the responses on quesations you’re following? If you have 2465 that means all you’re doing is ask questions and answers and not sleep etc. And of course that isn’t it.

@flo I just wrote “Activity for Me” as part of my low-key humor to indicate my own “Activity for You”.

When I click on Activity for You and go to the bottom of the list, it starts listing responses to threads I’m following that I have already seen, as I tried to illustrate in my previous post.

But since it takes a long time to load, I rarely do that, so I have a lot of unread threads (currently 2464) listed there. I rarely if ever kept up with all the activity, and never had a habit of trying to, so it piled up, particularly when I wasn’t very active on the site for a couple of years.

What I usually do is come to the site one or more times per day, respond to any Messages for You (which I rarely have unless I’ve answered RedDeerGuy), look at that day’s questions or the day before’s. and click on my most recent Great Answers listed, because fairly often that means someone’s replied to me and/or I’m interested in that thread.

I also use the Next Activity link in the middle, which I think is the same as the top (most recent) Activity for You, except it is already loaded with every page, so it’s fast. But I only do that for a bit, often stopping when I’m tired or see a thread in Next Activity that I don’t feel like checking at that point.