It's never good when you're feeling kind of sick so you type your symptoms into Google and the first result is: "terminal inflamed super herpes." And then you rush to urgent care and find out from a doctor that it's actually just gas.
According to
a new survey, 43% of people admit they've convinced themselves they had a
serious disease after Googling their symptoms, when it turned out they actually had something much more minor.
And three out of four people who've diagnosed themselves online said it made them worry more, not less, about what was wrong with them.
So do we ever get our self-diagnosis right? The survey found it can happen, but we get it right less than 40% of the time. Which honestly doesn't seem like bad odds.
Even if you google and it tells you something horrible is going to happen, and that encourages you to actually go to a professional, I'd consider that a win.
