We’re all guilty. You know how sometimes you get a little headache and you take an aspirin but it doesn’t go away, so you head to your computer and start Googling your symptoms? It doesn’t take much to convince yourself you have a brain tumor or are about to rupture an aneurysm.
In reality, you really only have a headache and you’re going to live at least another 40 or 50 years. But the temptation to find out everything you can in today’s information age is sometimes too difficult to resist.
The problem with Googling your symptoms is that it’s far too easy to end up with misinformation. You could fall into a marketing trap for a gimmick cure that probably doesn’t work. Even Google itself is guilty of interpreting the data incorrectly; recall Google tracking flu outbreaks for years and were found to be 25% less accurate than the CDC. Also, web based symptom checkers were found to be accurate only 34% of the time, and a quarter of web searches for headaches pointed to brain tumors as the cause. Hence. it’s important to go see a doctor when you aren’t feeling well and leave Google to help you with other things.
Explore the below infographic prepared by the team at Mastersinpsychologyguide.com to learn more about Cyberchondria and how asking Dr.Google can pose risk to your health!
