an apple a day

About 95 million American adults use the Internet to find health information, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project—and as more Americans gain at-home Internet access each year, it’s safe to say that number will only increase. In my blog 2.0, I’ll be targeting two different segments of this large chunk of the population—young-to-middle-aged men and young-to-middle-aged women, all of whom have Internet access and at least some college education and are middle class.

Obviously health information is not the most frequently sought-out topic online (compared to news, weather, entertainment, directions, etc.), but users tend to spend more time with the online health information they find. “You might spend 3.5 minutes looking up movie times and one hour reading about genital herpes,” says Dr. Robert Wolfe of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago in a 2003 interview with HealthDayNews.

It’s no surprise that the Web is a useful source of health information. I spoke to Jen Allen, project editor at prevention.com, and she elaborated about why the Web works for health:

“[T]here’s no office waiting room and no insurance hassle — the Web offers endless possibility for do-it-yourself health, and for researching your condition on your own time, in a way that makes you comfortable. The best patients are those who arm themselves with enough knowledge about their condition before their doctor’s visit, so that they can ask informed questions about their health. In an uncertain health climate (e.g., rising costs of care, universal health care debate, arguable decrease in quality of care, etc.), the one thing you know you can control is your ability to take control of your health and inform yourself.”

Women

While both sexes value online health information, women are more likely to search for and read it. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 54 percent of online health seekers are women, and 82 percent of women Internet users in general have searched for health information. Nearly 60 percent of online women have searched for diet information. About 40 percent of online women have searched for exercise and fitness information, and about 30 percent have searched for information about alternative medicine.

It’s clear from the sheer amount of health information targeted toward women that this group is hungry for it. Other than Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness and the muscle mags, nearly all general consumer health magazines out there are targeted toward women—Health, Self, Shape, Prevention, Women’s Health—even the supposedly gender-neutral Canadian health magazine alive has a readership of about 88 percent women.

Men

Of men who use the Internet, 75 percent have searched for health information, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The same survey found that 43 percent of men had done a diet-related online search. About 40 percent of men have sought information on the Internet about exercise and fitness. About 20 percent have searched for information about experimental treatments. But while these numbers demonstrate that men are interested in health, it’s not that simple.

As Men’s Health editor in chief David Zinczenko said in an interview with the Washington Post, “It’s not that [men] are uninterested [in health]. It’s just that they don’t like to share their concerns with anyone, including wives, medical doctors, insurance agencies and the ER staff. Admitting to a health problem is a sign of vulnerability, and they hate it more than they hate being sick. But they have made some progress in the last 20 years. Today a lot of men compare their blood pressure and cholesterol numbers like they used to compare their maximum bench press. Anybody can go out and buy a plasma TV; health is the new hallmark of success.”

As such, the tone of the men’s site would be a bit more humorous and generally targeted toward the fact that men don’t want to feel vulnerable or be talked down to. And in fact, considering their common reluctance to admit when they have a problem, a highly developed health Web site targeted toward men would be the perfect source of information for them—men seek out health information already, the Internet is highly anonymous, and visiting a Web site is much less conspicuous than carrying around a magazine.