Exploring the relationship between Cyberchondria and Perceived Stress in the Meta World: A Gender Perspective

The 21^st century has brought an unparalleled boom in technological progress, fundamentally altering the way we live, communicate as well as work. It has become the main engine accelerating innovation and change in many areas of life. A few keystrokes in the world of internet is offering a plethora of health information, making it simpler than ever to look up symptoms, remedies and wellness advice. But excessive navigations/ search of health related information intensifies anxiety, emotional distress and excessive concerns about physical health which is termed as “Cyberchondria” (Mathes et al., 2018).  Sometimes the situation lead individuals perceive their circumstances as stressful, unpredictable and uncontrollable which give rise to “perceived stress”. Concerning this global scenario, the present study aimed at examining the relationship between cyberchondria and perceived stress. It also found out the gender differences in cyberchondria and perceived stress. 100 samples including 50 female and 50 male from different corners of Odisha within the age range of 18-44 were included in the study. Two famous psychological scales i.e. Short version of Cyberchondria Severity scale (CSS-12) and Perceived stress Scale (PSS) were used to collect the data. Data were collected online via Google forms. Two tailed T-test and Pearson Product moment correlation was used to analyse data. Result indicated a highly significant gender differences both in cyberchondria and perceived stress. A highly significant positive correlation was also found between cyberchondria and perceived stress. So from the study it was concluded that female faces higher degree of cyberchondria as well as perceived stress and as the degree of cyberchondria increase the degree of perceived stress also increases. This study also highlighted the need of digital sensitization to protect the mental health of current generation.