If you’ve ever gone online to look up a symptom and emerged convinced something is seriously wrong, you’re not alone. In today’s digital world, information about health is everywhere—on social media feeds, news alerts, podcasts, and comment sections. While access to information can be empowering, for many people it has quietly become a source of distress.
For individuals prone to health anxiety, social media, doom scrolling, and fear-based health content can significantly amplify worry, uncertainty, and preoccupation with the body.
Health anxiety involves excessive worry about having or developing a serious illness, even when medical evaluations are reassuring. People experiencing health anxiety often notice normal bodily sensations—fatigue, a headache, a flutter in the chest—and interpret them as signs of something dangerous. Reassurance may help briefly, but the anxiety tends to return, often stronger than before.
Social media platforms are designed to capture attention, and unfortunately, fear is highly engaging. Stories about rare illnesses, worst-case outcomes, misdiagnosed conditions, and “warning signs doctors ignore” are more likely to be shared, liked, and pushed by algorithms.
For someone with health anxiety, this can create a perfect storm:
Doom scrolling—repeatedly consuming distressing content, especially late at night or during moments of vulnerability—can reinforce the belief that vigilance is necessary for safety.
Fear-based health content often suggests that if you just read enough, research enough, or catch something early enough, you can avoid catastrophe. While this can feel reassuring at first, it often backfires.
Instead of increasing control, it can:
Over time, the nervous system stays in a state of threat detection, making anxiety feel constant and unavoidable.
A common frustration for people with health anxiety is that reassurance—whether from doctors, loved ones, or test results—doesn’t last. Social media makes this worse by constantly introducing new possibilities and rare conditions to worry about.
Each new post or video can undo the reassurance gained earlier, reinforcing the cycle:
anxiety → checking → temporary relief → more anxiety
Reducing health anxiety doesn’t require avoiding all health information, but it does involve changing how you relate to it.
Helpful steps may include:
Therapy can be especially helpful in addressing the underlying patterns that maintain health anxiety, including catastrophic thinking, reassurance-seeking behaviors, and nervous system dysregulation.
If worries about your health are interfering with your sleep, concentration, relationships, or sense of well-being, it may be time to seek professional support. Working with a therapist can help you develop a more trusting relationship with your body, reduce the influence of fear-based content, and regain a sense of balance and calm.
If you are in or near Chicago, reach out to us and we can help you find a therapist who matches your needs. Health anxiety is not a personal failure or a lack of logic—it’s a learned response that can be unlearned with the right tools.
In a world saturated with alarming health information, the goal isn’t to know more—it’s to feel safer, steadier, and more at ease in your own body.
This piece was written by Adam Smith, LPC, a clinician on our team. Adam draws from his work supporting clients, athletes, and high performers experiencing health and performance-related anxiety concerns.
