Three of the top five symptoms searched for on Yahoo Mobile in January were early pregnancy, herpes and H.I.V. None of these symptoms showed up among the top searches on desktop computers, which are more likely to be used by older people.
The most popular symptom searches on PCs included gastroenteritis, heart attacks, gout and shingles, Yahoo said, adding that the encyclopedic medical symptoms checker on WebMD was the most popular site of its kind among PC users. On WebMD, the top symptoms searched for in January were muscle strain, gastroenteritis and irritable bowel syndrome.
…“I do health searches all the time,” said Brittany Lashley, 20, who is majoring in Chinese at the University of Maryland at College Park. She surfs the Web on her iPod Touch for food and drinks that she hopes will increase her energy level and help her stay awake and sharp for late-night studying.
The article is interesting throughout.
what kind of college student searches the web for energy drinks and/or drinks that contain caffeine? wtf?
You know how when you tell your mom stuff about yourself, you later hear her repeating it to someone else, with all the details horribly mangled, usually in a way that makes you sound kind of lame?
Journalists are like moms.
It’s quite interesting how pregnancy is considered a symptom…What is the illness there?
More pressingly, where do these fine ladies hang out?
Ha! LOL.
The last word of the quote was definitely not what I was expecting going into that sentence.
“‘I’m checking calories,’ she [Ariel Young] said.”
Judging by her picture in the article, not checking hard enough.
I like Kathleen Madigan’s joke that during many hours spent obsessively rummaging on WebMD she discovered that she has ankle cancer.
.Uh oh…I thought that lump was the joint.
I get more from reading the primary literature. That’s how bad those medical sites are in general. They seem to have been run by the guy that bought ICANHASCHEEZBURGER. They seem to be improving though.
None of these are symptoms; they are diagnoses and diseases.
There’s another factor other than age that might be in play: When you search on a smartphone, nobody else can see what you’re doing, but if you search on a desktop, other people in the house might shoulder-surf or see your browser history (accidentally or deliberately).
The mobile search terms, as well as being more likely to affect younger people, are also more likely to be things the person searching wouldn’t want their family to know about.
Not just at home, but at work as well.
There is no way to distinguish a desktop from laptop does that change the results?
I do think the desktop v. mobile would be work v. non work. Most employers still provide desktops in the work place.
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