The importance — to our health — of becoming digitally savvy is the focus of a provocative article published online Thursday in the Atlantic magazine. The article describes the health-related dangers posed by a phenomenon the article’s authors call misinfodemics — “the spread of a particular health outcome or disease facilitated by viral misinformation.” As the article’s authors — An Xiao Mina , a technologist who works for the digital media nonprofit Meedan, and Nat Gyenes , a health and technology researcher affiliated with Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society — explain, “digital health misinformation is having increasingly catastrophic impacts on physical health.” For example: Recent research found that Twitter bots were sharing content that contributed to positive sentiments about e-cigarettes. In West Africa, online health misinformation added to the Ebola death toll. In New South Wales, A...
