The pandemic has led to an increase in video call apps and resources, the most popular of these being Zoom. Many are working from home and taking classes using this platform. This has led to the coining of the phrase, “Zoom fatigue.” This refers to the increase of exhaustion and tiredness that people are feeling after being on video calls and staring at their screens all day. Stanford identified a few reasons why Zoom and the increase in video calls cause this tiredness. One reason is the increase and intensity of close-up eye contact, explained by saying, “A listener is treated nonverbally like a speaker, so even if you don’t speak once in a meeting, you are still looking at faces staring at you. The amount of eye contact is dramatically increased.” More reasons are that seeing yourself in the video constantly and in real-time can be dramatically tiring, that video chat reduces our ability to move around as one must be sitting in front of the screen for long periods of time and that there is the extra effort that must be put into acknowledging others and indicating our emotions because “in regular face-to-face interaction, nonverbal communication is quite natural and each of us naturally makes and interprets gestures and nonverbal cues subconsciously. But in video chats, we have to work harder to send and receive signals.” All these things are individually tiring, but combined they can build up to some serious Zoom fatigue. There are ways to combat this, as Harvard Business Review proposes. Here are five ways to decrease Zoom fatigue:
1. Avoid multitasking while on a video chat. Doing too many things at one time increases stimuli, making a person more tired after. “Because you have to turn certain parts of your brain off and on for different types of work, switching between tasks can cost you as much as 40 percent of your productive time. Researchers at Stanford found that people who multitask can’t remember things as well as their more singularly focused peers.”
2. Make time to take breaks. “Take mini-breaks from video during longer calls by minimizing the window, moving it to behind your open applications, or just looking away from your computer completely for a few seconds now and then.” It is also important to take time away from screens altogether and do something like taking a walk in nature, exercising, or even just doing something creative or relaxing.
3. Reduce the number of stimuli from your screen. “Research shows that when you’re on video, you tend to spend the most time gazing at your own face. This can be easily avoided by hiding yourself from view.” In Zoom, there are ways to show only the speaker and to hide, and this would be the best way to reduce the fatigue that you get from viewing so many screens, including your own.
4. Make non-essential video calls optional. For many people, the amount of social interaction that Zooming all day requires is very tiring in itself, but then having to do social calls makes Zoom fatigue worse. “That’s why virtual social sessions should be kept opt-in, meaning whoever owns the event makes it explicit that people are welcome, but not obligated, to join.” By making these events optional, it can take the pressure and stress off of people who are very drained by video calls.
5.Avoid video calls if you can phone call or email instead. These are good options for communication, and perhaps even better in some cases, but so many feel like it must be a Zoom call. Instead, try to lean towards phone calls or emails as well. This would help everyone with combatting Zoom fatigue.
For more information about ways to combat Zoom fatigue, look at these articles by Stanford and HBR.