Almost as long as the internet has been around, people have worried about what the boundless and often ill-informed webpages might mean for users’ health anxieties. It’s a running joke on social media: googling a headache will lead you to conclude that you have brain cancer.
It might be the fault of the internet — and how it often does a bad job of explaining the risk of different worst-case-scenario health problems — that an achy joint has you contemplating the status of your will. But your natural inclinations might play a role too. And for some people, a tendency towards anxiety plus the world wide web can be a problematic combination.
Odds are you already know it, but it bears repeating: The internet is full of bad health information. In particular, many websites fail to convey risk. Sure, a list of the possible reasons behind someone’s symptoms might appear. ...
