Daily Click: The Social Life of Health Information

A report, The Social Life of Health Information by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and the California HealthCare Foundation provides insight into how Americans are accessing health information on the web. The survey was of 2,253 adults, age 18 and older, interviewed in December 2008.

According to the survey, nowadays 61% of adults look online for health information, compared with 25% in 2000 and intriguingly many of these individuals particularly wanted to find information from “someone-like-me”. The full report looks at many other aspects of health- seeking information including the role of social networking sites, what topics are looked for, and how often people actually comment on what’s on the web.

PS If you’d like to understand more about how you use technology, take the Pew center’s quiz, What Kind of Tech User Are You?