Skyhaven - shaving really doesn't affect how hair grows. The thing that happens is people start getting the hair coming in as they age, it's very normal for men and for women. Hormones changing and all. So then they start doing something about it - and it gets "worse" and they think it's what they did that made it get worse. But that's not true at all. it was getting "worse" anyway due to hormones and would have kept doing that anyway.
I just shave mine.
That all being said, there are two things I'll point out.
First, if you shave you are cutting the hair across its "thick part". So as it keeps growing you see that thick part in its full thickness. So it *looks* thicker to the eye. Like a play-dough machine pushing out a solid circle.
If instead you yank it out then a brand new hair forms down in the follicle and when new hairs grow they start with a tiny tip. So as that comes out of the follicle it will of course look thinner at the top.
Also, if you keep yanking out hairs you are often pulling out root-bits with the hair. So you're damaging the roots. This might mean eventually you kill off a root or two and therefore have less hairs. On the other side, you might also damage it so that it splits and now you have two hairs there instead of one. So it's pure luck which way you go. I have heard from people who keep pulling and pulling (i.e. waxing) that eventually they do kill off all the roots and end up with no hair. It takes a while though.
I say to just shave daily. Also if you really care you can of course talk to your doctor about hormones to fix the underlying problem. Different problems like PCOS can lead to hormone inbalance to cause more hair growing.
Of course with so many people complaining about thinning hair and bald spots, it's relatively a nice thing to have too much hair