The Internet has forever changed the way patients learn about medical care. I’ve written about this on numerous occasions. Consumers spending a few minutes on the Internet can learn more about their health condition than their doctors would ever have time to teach them during periodic, 15-minute office visits. Americans with rare, chronic diseases can connect with others through online support groups. They can share wisdom with those who have their condition and learn which drug therapies have worked for them. If nothing else, they can commiserate with those suffering a similar fate to their own.
I have also written about physicians who create medical content on YouTube, teaching patients about specific conditions. Members and strangers alike can post comments and share their views. People suffering with a condition could watch a video and jump over to a web-based portal to connect with others in a more private setting. That is how it would work in a perfect chronic disease management world.
Then there is a darker side to social media medicine, where social media charlatans convince (mostly young, impressionable) women to start drug therapies for conditions they do not have. Examples of this include antidepressants for normal stress and beta blockers for social anxiety. Then there are the highly exaggerated, sensationalized videos. TikTok, the Chinese owned social media website became the cesspool of user-created, inferior quality content. The following is from a patient education website:
When Megan was first diagnosed with myasthenia gravis (MG), she found herself overwhelmed by fear and uncertainty. Sitting in the emergency room, she turned to TikTok in hopes of finding clarity about what her future might look like. But the very first video she saw — a woman rising from a wheelchair after years of disability — sent her into a panic. Megan suddenly wondered whether she, too, would become wheelchair-bound or severely disabled.
In the anecdote above Megan’s point was to get your health information from credible sources from trained experts, not sensationalized videos.
TikTok is arguably the worst place to search for health information. For instance, a Google AI synopsis of ideal TikTok videos states: videos between 21 and 34 seconds generate the highest engagement. Entertainment videos ideally should be between 18 and 31 seconds in length. Education content should be between 42 and 54 seconds long.
The vast majority of TikTok videos I have seen were recorded on a smartphone, often from the passenger seat of a stationary car. It is rarely a physician’s office or a recording studio designed for video.
Finally, health information on the Internet makes hypochondria much worse, and can lead to Internet addiction. A recent article in the journal, Current Psychology stated:
Repetitive online searches for health information increase anxieties and result in Internet addiction. Internet addiction, cyberchondria, anxiety sensitivity, and hypochondria have been studied separately, but how these concepts are reciprocally linked has not been investigated. This study aimed to determine the levels, correlations, and predictors of Internet addiction, cyberchondria, anxiety sensitivity, and hypochondria among students based on the sample’s characteristics.
Our unique findings indicate that cyberchondria can contribute to developing Internet addiction compared to earlier studies. The findings suggest the importance of empowering students to overcome their anxieties by managing cyberchondria and Internet addiction. Mental health professionals, namely psychiatric nurses, are at the forefront of taking preventive mental health measures on campus, such as screening and referring students who exhibit these problems to psychological support and counseling to cope with their anxieties.
A recent JAMA study found taking a break from social media can reduce young peoples’ anxiety and improve their mental health. I suspect it is especially beneficial if they are perusing bogus health information from sketchy social media influencers on shady websites. That last bit of wisdom is mine, not necessarily from JAMA.
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