2023-11-17 11:08:38
Canarians (66.4%), Extremadurans (64.2%) and Galicians (61.6%) are the citizens who seek the most information about diseases on the Internet.
52% of Spaniards go to the Internet to search for information about symptoms that can guide them towards a diagnosis according to data collected from the V Health and Life Study. The report analyzes the evolution of trends in lifestyle and health, also evaluating the role acquired by new technologies in this field. This practice is not without risks since there are scientific-looking pages that hide commercial messages, which can act against people’s health.
There is a growth in those people who feel the impulse to search for symptoms on the Internet instead of consulting and seeking advice from a health professional. In fact, this percentage has increased by 8.5 points if we compare it with the results obtained last year, which represented (43.5%).
When segmented by profiles, it is observed that women have a greater tendency to find out about symptoms and diseases online (55% compared to 48.4% of men). If we analyze this variable segmented by age groups, we find a great difference between the different groups. For people between 18 and 25 years old, the percentage of people who go to the Internet looking for information about symptoms or different ailments rises to 70.6%. This figure gradually decreases as the age range increases until reaching those over 65 years of age, whose figure drops to 33.3%.
Furthermore, people who work (57.6%) and who do not have children (57.1%) search for symptoms on the Internet to a greater extent. Likewise, there is a greater willingness to self-diagnose among people who self-medicate (66.1%) and those who use health and well-being apps (65.8%).
When looking at the data by geographical area, Canarians (66.4%), Extremadurans (64.2%) and Galicians (61.6%) are the citizens who seek the most information about diseases online. On the other hand, Catalonia (42.8%), the Basque Country (44.6%) and Cantabria (46.2%) are the regions with the lowest percentage of people who resort to the Internet to find out about symptoms and ailments.
Occasional pain or minor illnesses: these are the most searched problems on the internet.
The search for information about possible health problems is very varied, although occasional symptoms such as headache, back or stomach pain stand out, amounting to up to 54.6% of searches (6 percentage points more than in 2022). Next are mild or specific diseases, such as colds, conjunctivitis, candidiasis, herpes…, which give rise to 48.8% of consultations. Psychological symptoms and chronic or recurring diseases are also present, although at a greater distance and growing slightly compared to last year.
Regarding the channels used by users, search engines continue to be the main search channel for 41.5%, although an increase in the use of social networks is observed compared to last year (10.2%, compared to 4.9% in 2022). There is also a significant increase in the credibility of the information found on the Internet and networks: 53.3% trust the data they find, compared to 40.4% the previous year.
Taking sociodemographic factors into account, no major gender differences are observed in Internet searches except for a small jump in the percentage of women who report psychological symptoms (33.6% versus 30.1%).
By age, searches related to emotional health are much smaller among those over 65 years of age (18.1%) than in the rest of the age groups. In this sense, the search for information about chronic diseases is also lower among the younger age groups and reaches its peak in the segment of 56 to 65 years, who search for these reasons in 39.4% of cases.
Internet searches for psychological symptoms increase
The percentage of people who search the internet for psychological symptoms rises to 34.3% (19.7% in 2022), although in the same way, the number of Spaniards who declare that they do not have any psychological symptoms also decreases (from 20.2% to 12.2%)
The main reason these profiles go online is to understand what is happening to them (56.7%) although, despite being the main reason, there is a significant decrease compared to the previous year (83.6%). The second most common reason is thinking that psychological problems can be solved by oneself (25.6%) and, thirdly, economic reasons and not being able to afford to pay a mental health professional (21.5%). ).
By age groups, in the group of those between 26 and 40 years old there are the fewest people who say they do not have psychological symptoms (6.9%) and 46% of this group acknowledge searching more frequently on the Internet the causes of psychological symptoms. Those over 65 years of age are the group with the most people without symptoms (31.5%). It is striking that among people whose economic situation has improved there is a very high percentage of more frequent searches for psychological symptoms (48.1%). RV. Ana Mera, pharmacist. Barcelona
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