When A Concern 黑料门 Health Turns into Health Anxiety
In 2024, the internet has morphed into the wild wild west.
Goofy cat videos and birthday wishes from grandma have been usurped by cesspools of celebrity gossip, gaggles of conspiracy theorists and factions full of medical professionals turned influencers.
As different online communities grow and misinformation and fear-mongering spread, it is easy to see how feelings of anxiety could grow alongside it.
The medical social media community is flourishing online. It seems we are always searching for answers and with access to “doctors” in the palm of our hands it can be easy to get swept away by the myriad of ailments we might have.
Many self-proclaimed “health” content creators on TikTok and other social media platforms have used their following to share their views and journeys within the medical field. Some health/wellness creators are genuine medical professionals such as dieticians or psychiatrists who may offer tips and tricks to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Other creators fall into the category of “health” influencers who share their personal experiences — whether it is their battles with cancer, IVF journeys, or day-to-day path to living well.
Promoting health online may seem like a good thing, but when your feed gets overrun with stories about healthy young women who suddenly fell ill with cancer, fathers in recovery after strokes, or couples sharing their painful fertility journeys — it makes you wonder, what if that was me?
With intense social media messaging and unverified content, it is easy to go down anxiety-inducing rabbit holes, but how severely is consumption of health media increasing levels of anxiety and should social media platforms be doing more to moderate this type of content?
In 2014, researchers Karmpaul Singh and Richard J. Brown conducted a using students at the University of Manchester after recognizing immense growth in health-related internet use. Their study which aimed to find a correlation between health anxiety and health-related internet use found that health anxiety was positively correlated to frequency of health-related searching, proportion of health-related information sought, and number of searches for both illness and wellness information.
A 2015 research review suggested that 90% of people in the U.S. have used the internet to search for health information and 1 in 3 adults have gone online to try and diagnose a medical condition according to .
What started as seemingly innocent and curious explanations of online health has grown from increased anxiety to now a relatively new clinical phenomenon known as Cyberchondria.
Cyberchondria describes a set of symptoms in which repeated internet searches regarding medical information result in excessive concerns about physical health. This additional health-related media consumption can contribute to greater levels of health anxiety, according to .
Although Cyberchondria is not an official diagnosis that could be found in the ( DSM-5), this set of symptoms is closely related to hypochondria — now often labeled as health anxiety — which is an anxiety disorder in which one grows obsessed with one’s health.
A conducted by Brittany M. Mathes, Aaron M. Nott, Nicholas P. Allan, Brian J. Albanese, and Norman B. Schmidt found that cyberchondria is also linked to public burdens such as increased functional impairment and healthcare utilization. The study also further supported the identification of cyberchondria as a set of clinical symptoms that are closely related yet separate from general health anxiety.
In 2023 another found not only can Cyberchondria increase anxiety, but it can also have an effect on health-related metacognition, cognitive bias and emotional regulation, meaning it could affect the way one is able to understand their own thought process while also making it more difficult to control emotions.
Anxiety is a phenomenon that is not easy on the body or brain. When one feels anxious, - physical symptoms such as increased heart rate, sweating, and rapid breathing can take place. Symptoms of anxiety disorders are thought to be a disruption of the emotional processing center in the brain, according to .
The brain’s limbic system, which comprises the hippocampus, amygdala, hypothalamus and thalamus is responsible for the majority of emotional processing. As such, individuals with anxiety disorders may experience heightened activity in these areas.
Anxiety often starts when the decision-making area of your brain perceives a threat which then triggers a response in the amygdala that is followed by the hypothalamus initiating a fight or flight response.
With health anxiety and cyberchondria, this could look like the perceived threat being an undiagnosed ailment in your body. This triggers fear receptors in the amygdala, which makes your brain perceive there is something to be afraid of that needs to be taken care of. In this scenario, a fight or flight application from the hypothalamus would look like “fighting” and taking steps to reduce the anxiety surrounding the issue such as seeking professional medical advice. “Flight” could look like ignoring the problem hoping the anxiety goes away.
Persistent anxiety could lead to growth in the amygdala which intensifies the body’s response to threatening stimuli. It can also shrink the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain associated with learning and memory. This can make it difficult for a person to remember things and form new memories, which is why it is important to treat anxiety and find ways to avoid triggering stimuli such as online health information.
Brittany Chesworth, a therapist from Southern California, has been exploring the correlation between social media and health anxiety in her work. She has amassed almost forty thousand followers online with her which aims to help people reduce feelings of health anxiety, much of which she has found to be health-related.
When thinking about social media, specifically, Chesworth - explained that it is increasingly difficult to navigate the online health community since there are often legitimate doctors online. For someone with health anxiety, it can become an obsession of binging videos surrounding a set of symptoms and potential diseases while overanalyzing one’s own bodily sensations.
“It can become a whole vicious cycle for them,” said Chesworth. “Because they start to obsess about that. That's not to say those doctors providing that information aren't great, and in some cases, it's probably saved lives, right? Because it's spreading awareness. But I think that's the problem. For people with health anxiety, it’s problematic.”
Within the spectrum of health anxiety, one can still experience health anxiety symptoms without a proper diagnosis especially due to the vast amount of health media online. Chesworth said a distorted view of reality has been built online when stories of the terminally ill are spotlighted. - As humans, those are the stories we gravitate towards.
No one cares about the survivors — they are engulfed by the tragedies.
According to the , surveys show that 90% of teens aged 13-17 are on some form of social media. With 51% of those teens utilizing social media daily.
Although social media platforms typically have moderation systems and policies such as option to report and remove inappropriate posts, medical advice and tales from doctors don’t typically fall under the umbrella terms listed in content violations.
For Meta, content violations include graphic imagery, nudity, hate speech, law-breaking and more. A doctor sharing the symptoms of colon cancer is typically not graphic, lude or hateful, however, it can have extremely harmful ramifications.
While it may be difficult to censor content that is meant to be helpful, social media platforms can work to fact-check information or put warnings on content that is not coming from a verified medical professional or valid source.
Content moderation gets increasingly more complex when considering there is easily accessible health information from extremely reputable medical sources such as the or . This is where the censorship responsibility falls on the media consumer since these medical sources can be beneficial when navigated properly.
Chesworth said one of the strategies she recommends to avoid these feelings of fear is a content cleanse. She suggested it is best to stop interacting, scroll past and let this media type fade into the background.
We all have bodies and have experienced some form of pain. Whether it's a suspicious sneeze or an achy back, there is an intrinsic desire for us as humans to understand and overcome.
However, the emergence of cyberchondria shows that health media does indeed have the potential to severely increase anxiety levels and the easily accessible nature of this media can be a serious problem.
Content moderation of this type of media will continue to remain complicated as the good is so deeply intertwined with the bad. A video explaining the symptoms of Type 1 diabetes could send one viewer into an anxious tizzy but could save another viewer's life. I, unfortunately, feel the answer lies deeper in wise media consumption than it does in moderation.
If you find yourself checking WebMD multiple times a day or binge-watching a creator’s battle with cancer, your best bet might just be to turn your phone off — certainly easier said than done.