If it says it online it must be true!

Young people are looking online for everything these days, such as medical advice to dating advice to movies or video games. Young people’s increasing percent of finding advice online has increased from 31% to 53% in just two short years. “conducted a study in 2002 that found that 53 percent of all adults sometimes use the internet to look for health care information (Taylor, 2002).” and “An independent US study conducted in 1999 found that 31 percent of respondents under the age of 60 had sought health information on the web (Brodie et al., 2000)” The problem with this research is it doesn’t tell what or how they use the internet as the author states “While these figures are suggestive of a sea change in the way people are thinking about and managing their health, they give us little sense of the specific ways in which people are actually using the web.” Because the internet has a multitude of means of gaing information, and a multitude of different information can be considered medical. From what vitamins to take to how to cure cancer, the internet has a wide range of information. If 58% of young people looked up medical information and that information was about how to maximize their tanning sessions and not about serious medical advice the percent of young people who looked up meaningful information could be much lower.

The other huge issue that is coming into the light is the lack of essential medical advice either online or in print. Newspapers have stopped writing about it and magazines have included health issues along with financial or relationship help. Being healthy should be a priority for everyone not just something you read about next to the stocks or CD’s you should purchase, or how one day you’re going to save for your retirement. Placing health information next to those items gives yet another way to put off loosing that other ten pounds or even begin losing weight.

This is a qualitative paper because he is stating his findings of research he did. He states “In this article I discuss the findings of my study of young people, health and the internet in the context of these broader concerns over lay people’s potentially increased access to medical information via the web.” Doing his own research on what type of media is used to get medical information and the fact that the media is disappearing is qualitative research, and he sources other qualitative papers to help prove his research. The use of “I” is also a giveaway because he is doing the research and giving his knowledge of the matter.