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People Are Turning to YouTube and Instagram for Physical Therapy
High costs and lack of coverage are pushing people to online PT
Trusting the internet for medical advice has always been a crapshoot. A runny nose paired with a vivid imagination can quickly metastasize to a terminal prognosis from a number of sources, and often you don’t know the qualifications and motivations of social media advice-givers. But 27.5 million Americans don’t have health insurance, and even those with health care can find the out-of-pocket costs of physical therapy to be an insurmountable barrier. Sometimes it feels there’s nowhere else to go, really, but online.
When I was a marketing manager at a small San Francisco startup, I used my employer-provided insurance to splurge on a $30,000 shoulder surgery and complete roughly 10 months of physical therapy after a freak indoor skydiving accident. My surgeon recommended a number of physical therapy offices and I found one two blocks away from my company’s office in the financial district of San Francisco. Twice a week, I’d slip out at lunchtime to do my 3-pound bicep curls, hand bicycling, and other perspective-setting exercises. As my strength and mobility progressed, so did the intensity of my therapy sessions. But when I made the switch to full-time freelancing, a PT visit with a $20 co-pay turned into…
