Researchers identify four causes of “zoom fatigue” and its simple solutions

Even as more people connect to popular video chat platforms to connect with colleagues, family and friends during the COVID-19 pandemic, Stanford researchers have a warning for you: these video calls are probably tiring you.

Driven by the recent boom in video conferencing, communication professor Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL), examined the psychological consequences of spending hours a day on these platforms. Just as “Googling” is similar to any web search, the term “Zooming” has become ubiquitous and a generic verb to replace videoconferencing. Virtual meetings skyrocketed, with hundreds of millions taking place daily, as protocols of social detachment kept people physically apart.

In the first peer-reviewed article that systematically deconstructs Zoom’s fatigue from a psychological perspective, published in the magazine Technology, Mind and Behavior on February 23, Bailenson disassembled the media and assessed Zoom on its individual technical aspects. He identified four consequences of prolonged video chats that, he said, contribute to the sensation commonly known as “zoom fatigue”.

Bailenson emphasized that his goal is not to defame any specific videoconferencing platform – he appreciates and uses tools like Zoom regularly – but to highlight how exhaustive implementations of videoconferencing technologies today are and to suggest changes to the interface, many of which are simple to implement . In addition, it offers suggestions to consumers and organizations on how to take advantage of current video conferencing resources to reduce fatigue.

“Videoconferencing is a good thing for remote communication, but think in the middle – just because you can use video, it doesn’t mean you need to,” said Bailenson.

Below are four main reasons why video chats tire humans, according to the study. Readers can also fill out a questionnaire to see where they get on the zoom fatigue and exhaustion scale (ZEF).

Four reasons why

1) Excessive amounts of close eye contact are highly intense.

Both the amount of eye contact we have in video chats and the size of faces on screens are unnatural.

In a normal meeting, people will be looking at the speaker, taking notes or looking elsewhere. But on Zoom calls, everyone is looking at everyone, all the time. A listener is treated non-verbally as a speaker, so even if you don’t speak once in a meeting, you will still be looking at the faces that face you. The amount of eye contact increases dramatically. “The social anxiety of public speaking is one of the biggest phobias that exist in our population,” said Bailenson. “When you’re standing and everyone is looking at you, it’s a stressful experience.”

Another source of stress is that, depending on the size of your monitor and whether you are using an external monitor, the faces in video conference calls may appear too large for your comfort. “In general, for most settings, if it’s a face-to-face conversation when you’re with co-workers or even strangers in the video, you’re seeing their faces in a size that simulates a personal space that you normally experience when you’re with someone intimately, “said Bailenson.

When someone’s face is so close to ours in real life, our brains interpret it as an intense situation that will lead to mating or conflict. “What is actually happening when you use Zoom for many, many hours is that you are in this state of hyperexcitation,” said Bailenson.

Solution: Until platforms change their interface, Bailenson recommends taking Zoom out of the full-screen option and reducing the size of the Zoom window relative to the monitor to minimize face size and use an external keyboard to allow for an increase in the personal space bubble between himself and the grid.

two) Seeing yourself during video chats constantly in real time is tiring.

Most video platforms show a square of their appearance on the camera during a chat. But that is not natural, said Bailenson. “In the real world, if someone was following you with a mirror constantly – so that while you were talking to people, making decisions, giving feedback, receiving feedback – you were seeing yourself in a mirror, that would be crazy. No one could consider that, “he added.

Bailenson cited studies that show that when you see a reflection of yourself, you are more critical of yourself. Many of us now see ourselves in video chats for many hours every day. “It’s exhausting for us. It’s stressful. And a lot of research shows that there are negative emotional consequences to seeing yourself in the mirror.”

Solution: Bailenson recommends that platforms change the standard practice of transmitting the video for themselves and others when it only needs to be sent to others. In the meantime, users must use the “hide their own view” button, which can be accessed by right-clicking on their own photo, as soon as they see that their face is properly framed in the video.

3) Video chats dramatically reduce our usual mobility.

Personal and audio phone conversations allow humans to walk and move. But with video conferencing, most cameras have a defined field of view, which means that a person usually has to stay in the same place. Movement is limited in ways that are not natural. “There is growing research now that says that when people are moving, they have better cognitive performance,” said Bailenson.

Solution: Bailenson recommends that people think more about the room in which they are videoconferencing, where the camera is positioned and whether things like an external keyboard can help create distance or flexibility. For example, an external camera further away from the screen will allow you to follow and doodle in virtual meetings, just as we do in real meetings. And, of course, turning off the video periodically during meetings is a good rule of thumb for groups, just to give yourself a short, non-verbal rest.

4) The cognitive load is much higher in video chats.

Bailenson notes that in regular face-to-face interaction, non-verbal communication is quite natural and each of us naturally makes and interprets non-verbal gestures and clues subconsciously. But in video chats, we have to work harder to send and receive signals.

In fact, Bailenson said, humans have taken one of the most natural things in the world – a personal conversation – and turned it into something that involves a lot of thinking: “You need to make sure your head is framed in the center of the video. If you you want to show someone that you agree with the person, nod your head excessively or raise your thumbs. This increases the cognitive load because you are using mental calories to communicate. “

Gestures can also mean different things in a videoconference context. A sideways glance at someone during a personal meeting means something very different than a person on a video chat grid looking off the screen at their son who has just entered the home office.

Solution: During long periods of meetings, take an “audio only” break. “It’s not just about turning off your camera to take a break from not having to be non-verbally active, but also moving your body away from the screen,” said Bailenson, “so that for a few minutes you won’t be overwhelmed by gestures that are noticeably realistic, but socially meaningless. “

Many organizations – including schools, large companies and government entities – have sought out Stanford communications researchers to better understand how to create best practices for their specific videoconferencing setup and how to arrive at institutional guidelines. Bailenson – along with Jeff Hancock, founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab; Géraldine Fauville, former post-doctoral researcher at VHIL; Mufan Luo; Stanford graduate student; and Anna Queiroz, postdoctoral fellow at VHIL – responded by creating the Zoom Exhaustion and Fatigue Scale, or ZEF Scale, to help measure how much fatigue people are experiencing in the workplace due to video conferencing.

The scale, detailed in a recent article, not yet peer-reviewed, published on the pre-press website SSRN, advances research on how to measure interpersonal technology fatigue, as well as what causes fatigue. The scale is a 15-item questionnaire, which is available for free and has now been tested in five separate studies last year with more than 500 participants. He asks questions about a person’s general fatigue, physical fatigue, social fatigue, emotional fatigue and motivational fatigue. Some sample questions include:

Do you feel exhausted after the video conference? How irritated are your eyes after the video conference? How much do you tend to avoid social situations after the video conference? Do you feel emotionally drained after the video conference? How often do you feel too tired to do other things after the video conference?

Hancock said the scale’s results could help to change the technology so that stressors are reduced.

He notes that humans have been here before. “When we had elevators for the first time, we didn’t know whether we should face each other or not in that space. More recently, sharing hitchhikers raised questions about whether or not you talked to the driver, or whether you should go after the seat or the passenger seat. explained Hancock. “We had to develop ways to make it work for us. We are in that age now with videoconferencing and understanding the mechanisms will help us understand the ideal way of doing things in different environments, different organizations and different types of meetings.”

“We hope that our work will help to discover the roots of this problem and help people adapt their videoconferencing practices to alleviate ‘zoom fatigue’,” added Fauville, who is now an assistant professor at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. “It could also inform videoconferencing platform designers to challenge and rethink some of the paradigms on which videoconferences were built.”