Brief: cyberchondria

Research brief - `cyberchondria`

Field	Value
Slug	cyberchondria
Working title	Cyberchondria
Article shape	Domain Trap
Category	Digital Distortions (`modern`), beside Search Knowledge Illusion
Intent tags	anxiety, catastrophizing
AI authors credited	Grok 4.7
Reviewer or checker	none
Date	2026-09-28

Reader's real question:

I searched a normal symptom and ended on a serious disease. Did the search find the truth, or did the queries climb?

Why this belongs in the catalog:

The mechanism is the search loop: rankings, autocomplete, and follow-up queries walk from a common complaint to a rare grave one.
Fortune-telling and base-rate neglect are the neighbors. They do not teach the interface.

Bug claim in one sentence:

The bug is cyberchondria, where review of web results escalates concern about common symptoms into a serious, unlikely conclusion.

What this bug is not:

Not a ban on health search. Warning signs and prescribed-treatment questions are fair uses.
Not a claim that the rare case never happens. A proper assessment is the response to red flags, not another midnight query.
Starcevic and Berle is a review, not a new experiment. Do not invent rates.

Nearby bugs to check:

Nearby bug	Difference
Fortune-Telling	Catastrophe predicted from a feeling. Cyberchondria builds it from the query ladder.
Base-Rate Neglect	Vivid possibility crowds out commonness. Here grave pages are easy to rank.
Frequency Illusion	Once named, the symptom seems everywhere. Cyberchondria is how the name got installed.

Concept gate: yes

Source / concept	Year	What it supports	URL / DOI / note
White & Horvitz. Cyberchondria. ACM TOIS. Logs plus survey of 515.	2009	Defines unfounded escalation from common symptoms toward serious rare conditions. Tied to amount of medical content, escalatory wording, and a leaning to escalate. Worry can outlast the session.	https://doi.org/10.1145/1629096.1629101
Starcevic & Berle. Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics.	2013	Review: repeated health searching that leaves an already anxious person more distressed. Reassurance that backfires. Not new experimental data.	https://doi.org/10.1586/ern.12.162

Explained boundary: A new or severe symptom deserves care. Using the results page as the clinician is the error.

Examples: adding the disease "to rule it out"; symptom checker list; one more search.

Prevention: sensation words only; common causes first; a stop; clinician for red flags.

Related: fortune-telling, base-rate neglect, frequency illusion, search knowledge illusion.