It’s time to mute and disconnect.
There is now scientific support for “zoom fatigue,” the term for the exhaustion felt by those who work from home and students who learn remotely for more than a year by working, studying, and partying via video calling.
Follow a researcher at the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Laboratory, the results of which were published in the journal “Technology, Mind and Behavior,” according to a researcher at the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Laboratory, spend the days looking at colleagues or peers start to get really wrapped up.
“This piece describes a theoretical explanation … of why the current implementation of video conferencing is so exhausting,” writes Jeremy N. Bailenson in his article, citing “nonverbal overload” as the leading cause of video chat problems. .
Bailenson argues that constant video conferencing distorts our sense of intimacy and causes unnecessary stress.
“At Zoom, the behavior normally reserved for close relationships, such as long stretches of direct gaze and faces that are seen up close, has suddenly become the way we interact with casual acquaintances, co-workers, and even all unknown, “he writes.
In a conference room, you can sit farther away from classmates and break eye contact more often than in a video call, he argues. Psychologists have found that staring at us causes “physiological arousal” that suggests mating or fighting our primordial brains.
This is normal in a conference room if you’re the person presenting, but in Zoom, everyone is constantly looking, which, according to Bailenson, “effectively transforms listeners into speakers and invades everyone with the look in their eyes”.
He suggests eliminating the “Brady Bunch” format: the squares of participants and speakers stacked in a grid are simply unnatural. Try shrinking your monitor’s zoom window to reduce the loud audience of faces on the screen.
Another explanation for why apps like Google Meet and Zoom end us up: looking at our faces all day. Bailenson called the phenomenon a “mirror all day,” a phenomenon that caused more people to engage in plastic surgery and botox, and referred to a 1988 study in which men and women were forced to watch a video of themselves in real time while doing a test. . The study concluded that “the tendency to personal approach could cause women to experience depression.” So do yourself a favor and opt for “Hide self view” while in Zoom.
Bailenson’s paper concludes that video calls literally put us in a box. Because everyone involved in the call can see what the rest of them are doing, it’s not professional (or socially acceptable) to worry, yawn, stretch, or move much outside the virtual space we occupy on our screens.
We tend to compensate too much. Think: “nodding exaggeratedly for a few more seconds” and “looking directly at the camera (as opposed to the faces on the screen) to try to make direct eye contact when you speak.” A 2019 study referred to in the paper found that video conferencing tends to speak at a volume 15% higher than telephone speakers.
In addition, Zoom allows the translation to lose looks, nods, restlessness and eyes. In a meeting, you can tell when a colleague throws another aspect of disapproval. In a video call, where grids are mixed differently for each user, a coworker looking at their calendar can be perceived as a side eye to another.
Still, with the pandemic plummeting, “video conferencing is here to stay,” Bailenson says. But it wouldn’t be wrong, perhaps, to say so in an email.
“Maybe a driver of Zoom’s fatigue is simply that we’re taking more meetings than we would face to face,” he says.