Cyberchondria: Old Wine in New Bottles
Just before Thanksgiving, Microsoft released a study entitled, “Cyberchondria: Studies of the Escalation of Medical Concerns in Web Search.” Ryen White and Eric Horvitz took advantage of a data set that few people have access to (log files from Microsoft’s Live Search engine and MSN Health and Fitness) as well as a survey of 515 Microsoft employees. They also did a great service to those of us who have a problem with the term “cyberchondriac” since they define cyberchondria as “the unfounded escalation of concerns about common symptomatology, based on the review of search results and literature on the Web.” That does not describe most internet users and therefore, people might think about retiring the term from general usage. Read more
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