Have you fallen victim to constant googling? While it is perfectly acceptable to rely on search engines to get information, check symptoms or try and find more about your illness, it isn’t advisable to rely on Google when it comes to your health.
Google is not your doctor and no, you do not have cancer. Stop substituting the search engine for a real doctor. Truth be told, Google never answers your query; it simply displays a list of web pages based on specific keywords. Technology has come to replace many things in our life today, but seeking medical advice from a search engine can be the worst thing one can do. There is a reason we have doctors, doing what they do best. Let them do their jobs and leave your fictional Dr. Google baba behind.
Constant googling is a dangerous addiction. The internet is a vast ocean of information, the search engine algorithm works on keywords and will produce results desirable to your search. The more you delve into reading and believing everything that you read, the higher are the chances of misdiagnosing yourself. We do not have a doctor’s degree on our wall so, we wouldn’t know what is relevant to us and what isn’t. Reading and misreading information can only lead to restlessness, paranoia, anxiety and fear.
What is common between our parents’ generation and ours is that neither would go to the doctor until things get out of hand. Our parents wouldn’t go to the doctor as they were more reliant on home-remedies, while our generation rushes to Google to seek medical advice. Self-medication via the internet is not advisable.
Recently, a friend narrated an incident wherein she had a bad shoulder ache, procrastinated her visit to the doctor, but kept at googling symptoms. The search results made her believe she had lung cancer, but she kept it to herself, feeling low and anxious all the time. Finally, when she paid a visit to the doctor, she discovered that she had a vitamin D deficiency and the doctor gave her an earful for blindly going by a search engine’s result and delaying the visit.
Google is reliable when it comes to searching for a good doctor, reading about general health-related issues and checking the spellings of medications. Limit your googling to that and leave the rest to a real doctor.