ABSTRACT
One of the great attractions of the Internet is that you can use it to communicate with people around the world and exchange information. Virtual communities and social networks are being created in cyberspace, through mailing lists, newsgroups, electronic discussion forums, Web-based discussion forums, and live chat rooms. The Internet has opened a new social space for communication. An increasing number of health care consumers are now using the Internet for health-related research using newsgroups and chat rooms. These are obviously more casual forms of information gathering than using the Web, so you need to be particularly careful about using any information that someone passes on to you. If you do find something that interests you, see what some of the more reliable Web sites have to say on the topic. If you join health-related discussion lists, usenet groups, or chat rooms, try to find those monitored by a health care practitioner: this will offer protection against the possible sharing of wrong or irrelevant information.
