How to Overcome Being Cyberchondriac?

According to the New York State Psychiatric Institute’s Emily Doherty-Torstrick and colleagues, cyberchondria refers to “searching the web excessively for healthcare information.” It’s an exaggeration of what about 90% of Americans do ordinarily, which is “online symptom checking.” And while hypochondria was prevalent in previous decades as well, the Internet blew it out of proportions.

It is a “side-effect” of the digital health progress. As people are becoming more and more active when it comes to tracking and managing their wellbeing or disease, exaggeration is rampant. As technology progresses, we’ll have much more information on our hands about health and illness. Our ECG sensors, food sensors, sleep trackers, digital tattoos, online algorithms or genetic test results will all give us health data.

These tools are incredibly useful for prevention. However, as people have no training in how to interpret data and how to manage their own information, the result might be jumping to conclusions too early, misinterpreting information or falsely evaluating data.