Need an STI Diagnosis? No Problem — Consult the Crowd

Among the many uses of social media, requests for medical advice (known as crowd-diagnosis) have become increasingly common. Investigators assessed activity on a Reddit health forum focusing on sexually transmitted infections (STIs) to determine how often users requested an opinion about a possible STI diagnosis.

Between November 2010 and February 2019 almost 17,000 posts to this health forum were made, with numbers steeply rising. Among 500 randomly selected posts, 58% requested a diagnosis; of these, 31% included a photograph and 20% were made following a prior diagnosis by a healthcare clinician. Most requests received a response within a median of 3 hours.