Online cancer information seeking increases cancer worry

This study explored the effects of online cancer information seeking on cancer worry, which has been found to promote cancer screening. Although health information seeking models have used worry as a determinant of information seeking, the present study sought to demonstrate the reverse causality to show the psychological impact of the Internet in the health context. Study 1 (N = 308), a cross-sectional survey, recruited U.S. participants using Amazon Mechanical Turk, a crowd-sourcing online marketplace, and detected a positive association between online cancer information seeking from professional health-related websites and cancer worry. To establish the causality, Study 2 (N = 1130 at Wave 1 and 813 at Wave 2), a two-wave survey about stomach cancer in South Korea, was conducted. The results showed that online cancer information seeking from online news at Wave 1 increased cancer worry at Wave 2. Although the sources of cancer information seeking associated with cancer worry were different in Study 1 (professional health-related websites) and Study 2 (online news), the results were consistent in that each was the main source of cancer information for Study 1 and Study 2 participants, respectively. The findings suggested that online cancer information seeking from these frequently used sources can increase cancer worry, which plays a positive role in cancer prevention.