Cyberchondriac

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What Does Cyberchondriac Mean?

Cyberchondriac is a slang term for an individual who is constantly using the Internet to self-diagnose various health problems. In addition to providing large amounts of information, some medical websites allow people to enter in symptoms that they experience to get a list of disorders that match them. Although the medical information on the Web can help people to discover medical problems at an early stage, it may also lead to a tendency to overact to relatively minor symptoms.

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Techopedia Explains Cyberchondriac

The Internet can be a hypochondriac’s worst enemy due to the large volume of health information on websites, forums and so on. Do you have a stomach ache? It could be irritable bowel syndrome, gallstones or cancer. It could also be nothing at all. Although access to information is an excellent thing, this access can have negative repercussions for some people.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.