It’s time to turn the sound back on and relax.
There is now scientific support for “zoom fatigue”, the term for tiredness that those who work at home and students who are learning remotely feel in more than a year working, studying and partying by video call.
Spending our days looking at colleagues or colleagues is starting to really mess up our brains, according to a researcher at the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Laboratory, whose findings were published in the journal Technology, Mind and Behavior.
“This article provides a theoretical explanation … of why the current implementation of videoconferencing is so exhausting,” writes Jeremy N. Bailenson in his article, citing “non-verbal overload” as the main cause of videoconferencing problems.
Bailenson argues that constant video conferencing is distorting our sense of intimacy and causing unnecessary stress.
“At Zoom, the behavior normally reserved for intimate relationships – like long periods of staring and faces seen up close – has suddenly become the way we interact with casual acquaintances, coworkers and even strangers,” he writes.
In a conference room, you can sit away from colleagues and break eye contact more often than on a video call, he argues. Psychologists have found that being observed causes “physiological stimulation”, suggesting mating or fighting our primitive brains.
This is normal in a conference room if you are the person presenting, but on Zoom, everyone is being watched all the time, which, argues Bailenson, “effectively turns listeners into speakers and suffocates everyone with the stare”.
He suggests ending the “Brady Bunch” format: Squares of participants and speakers stacked on a grid are unnatural. Try to reduce the zoom window on your monitor to decrease the intense audience of faces on your screen.
Another explanation of why apps like Google Meet and Zoom eliminate us: looking at our own faces all day. Bailenson called the phenomenon “mirror all day” – a phenomenon that results in more people resorting to plastic surgery and Botox – and referred to an earlier 1988 study in which men and women were forced to watch a video in real time of themselves while taking a test. The study concluded that “the tendency to autofocus can lead women to suffer from depression”. So, do yourself a favor and choose to “Hide the self-view” while in Zoom.
Bailenson’s article concludes that video calls put us in a box, literally. Since everyone on the call can see what everyone else is doing, it is not professional – or socially acceptable – to worry, yawn, stretch, or move too far outside the virtual space we occupy on our screens.
We tend to compensate. Think: “nodding your head for a few extra seconds” and “looking directly at the camera (instead of the faces on the screen) to try to make direct eye contact when speaking”. A 2019 study cited in the article found that videoconferencing users tend to speak 15% louder than phone users.
In addition, Zoom makes appearances, waving, worrying and rolling your eyes lost in translation. In a meeting, you can tell when a colleague casts a disapproving look at another. In a video call, in which grids are confused differently for each user, a co-worker looking at his or her schedule can be perceived as a side eye to another.
Still, with the pandemic growing, “video conferencing is here to stay,” says Bailenson. But it wouldn’t hurt, perhaps, to say that in an email.
“Perhaps the cause of Zoom’s fatigue is simply that we are having more meetings than in person,” he says.