The term “pandemic” might send shivers down our spines since COVID-19 forever changed the way human beings look at everything from surgical masks to rolls of toilet paper. As indelible as those thoughts are, another related phenomenon may have the longest lasting effects.
An “infodemic” arose alongside COVID-19 cases, when too much information, including false or misleading information, flooded both digital and physical environments. The World Health Organization coined the term, and it lingers in the minds of health care professionals, as it loosely applies to everyday habits of seeking health information online.
“This has really ramped up over the past five to 10 years,” said pediatrician Todd Wolynn, a co-founder of Kids Plus Pediatrics. “Doing a simple search results in such disparate information that people don’t know what to do. And it’s not just internet searches. People go onto social media platforms, and that’s even whackier because you aren’t able to discern the resources.”
Arguably no group engages with that practice more than moms and dads — shown in one study to perform these searches daily — as parents seek superlative performance. Such as: What’s the best sleep method, the best bottle, the best first food?
But a more recent study, published in August in the International Journal of Behavioral Development, concluded that more time with a search bar often overwhelms parents, leaving them feeling even less confident in their abilities.
“One of the things we found is that when parents do searches, if they start to feel information overload,” defined as too much, or contradictory, information or information that’s too complex, “it can lead to more searching, but that actually makes parents feel less [confident] over time,” said Melissa Lippold, study co-author and associate professor in the University of North Carolina School of Social Work, who holds a doctorate from Pennsylvania State University.
The study looked at 214 parents — 85% of which were mothers — of children under 5 years old. They were surveyed twice, one year apart, about their internet use for parenting advice and how confident (or “self-efficacious”) they felt as a result.
Though these parents live in Sweden, and most were born there, Lippold feels the results can inform American parents about their own habits.
“There are lots of similarities, and certainly the process of parenting is pretty consistent compared to the U.S.,” she said. “Of course, the phenomenon of parents researching parenting is happening in all sorts of places.”
According to the study, parents with a higher level of self-efficacy at the first data point performed fewer internet searches over time. That result is largely intuitive: Fewer questions caused them to seek fewer answers.
For those with lower confidence scores, however, there was plenty of internet advice seeking. The result was a snowball effect of negativity — more information overload and a decreased sense of confidence. That led to even more searching — unless they chose their websites wisely.
“One of the things when you’re doing these general searches, you can get all kinds of information, some of which seems very different from other types of information,” Lippold said.
But that didn’t happen when they stuck to government-maintained websites on parenting.
“When you’re going to government sites, for instance, they’re more vetted. They’re based on what we know from science around parenting. They’re less likely to have contradictory information,” she said, noting that reliable sites from medical organizations can likely have the same effect.
And though this wasn’t a study parameter, Lippold theorizes that sidestepping social media sources of information has benefits beyond the information’s reliability.
UNC associate professor Melissa LippoldUNC associate professor Melissa Lippold co-authored a study that identifies when and why parents feel overwhelmed as they search for advice online.(University of North Carolina)
“We know that the idea of social comparison can be really damaging, and if you compare yourself to others a lot, it can make you feel less efficacious,” she said. “This is something where the science needs to catch up and help people to come up with ways to be educated as they’re engaging with social media and knowing how internet searching is affecting them, so they can know when to pull back or counteract any negative feelings.”
Based on interactions with his patient populations at Kids Plus offices in Pleasant Hills, Squirrel Hill and Cranberry, Wolynn agrees.
“Parents already have a rough time. Then, imagine how it feels to see feed after feed of what you’re doing wrong or being shamed for what you’re doing,” he said. “So, going out doing internet searches making you feel worse about yourself, not just because of the content, it’s precarious footing out there,” which is why Wolynn tries to counter the plethora of suspect online parenting and pediatric content by producing his own.
“It’s no longer the case that patients save up all of their questions for their visits, and physicians are held up high on pedestals. Those days are gone,” he said. “But if you’re trusted, and you are where families are — on their screens, ideally in their pockets — you could prevent them from getting information from another, less trustworthy way.”
Lippold suggests many avenues for further research beyond what she and colleague Terese Glatz published in August. How do these findings — overload and reduced confidence after general internet searches — affect parenting behaviors? What is the role of social comparison and social media on these feelings? What predicts when social media is helpful versus counterproductive?
But for now, she offers pointers based on the conclusions she, and her colleagues, have shown.
First, narrow the websites used for parenting information. For example, the American Academy of Pediatrics’ healthychildren.org is a frontrunner, as well as National Institutes of Health and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention content, as applicable.
Also, become aware of your emotional responses to researching online. “When you start to feel yourself get overloaded, or when you start to feel less confident or less like you know what’s going on, then it’s probably time to take a break,”Lippold said. “Just starting to have some of that awareness would be really important.”
Lastly, think about social support. Turning to trusted friends and relatives for advice is proven to be one of the biggest predictors of parental feelings of confidence.
And Wolynn offers another.
“If there’s one good thing that’s come out of the infodemic, it’s lessons about the importance of being better consumers of online content,” he said. “Recognize that content you read that elicits a visceral reaction is oftentimes written as such because it isn’t angling for journalism. It’s angling for a reaction.”
Tips to brace against the online storm:
