Researchers at Stanford University in Silicon Valley have confirmed what millions of outside workers already knew: “Zoom fatigue” causes more stress than real life encounters because of the “nonverbal overload” of endless video conversations.
A study by Jeremy Bailenson, communications professor and founder and director of the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab, found that the underlying causes of Zoom fatigue include ‘excessive amounts of close-up gaze’ and ‘increased self-evaluation from staring at video itself. “.
“Zoom users are seeing reflections of themselves at a frequency and duration not seen before in the history of the media – and probably human history,” Bailenson wrote.
Some of these issues could be fixed with ‘trivial changes’ to Zoom’s user interface, he suggested, such as automatically hiding the ‘selfie’ window that bounces off the user after the first few seconds of a call.
Bailenson also recommends Zoom users make simple changes themselves to reduce load, such as shrinking the video window so that other faces don’t feel as close.
More video conferences should be just like phone calls, he added.
Bailenson’s new article, published this week in the magazine Technology, mind and behavior, is heralded by Stanford as the “first peer-reviewed paper to systematically deconstruct Zoom fatigue from a psychological perspective”.
It is accompanied by a separate study, not yet peer-reviewed, that uses a “Zoom Exhaustion and Fatigue” scale to measure impact. After thousands of people completed a questionnaire, Bailenson said there was “strong theoretical reason to predict” that women would be more affected than men by watching video of themselves all day long.
Millions of knowledge workers around the world have now spent most of the year in guest rooms and home offices as the pandemic and waves of lockdowns have forced office closures.
Video conference apps such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet have grown enormously as a result. Zoom’s stock price has nearly quadrupled in the past year, giving it a market value of more than $ 100 billion.
Bailenson says he thinks Zoom is “great” and “works great,” but it has become a “punching bag” for frustrated office workers. “We don’t have much of our life under control, but we can scream about Zoom,” he said in an interview with the FT.
He acknowledged that the problems of Zoom fatigue pale in comparison to the daily trauma faced by medical staff in overburdened hospitals. Even in developed countries, millions of people do not have access to reliable broadband connections, and many cannot afford the hardware needed to make video calls.
Nonetheless, the Stanford investigation underscores the mental burden of being forced to sit in front of a camera and stare at screens full of faces – including ours.
“Op Zoom, behaviors usually reserved for close relationships – such as long strokes of direct gaze and faces being viewed up close – has suddenly become the way we interact with casual acquaintances, colleagues and even strangers,” Bailenson wrote.
Bailenson said he had tried to talk to Zoom about his findings, but “was still waiting for that meeting to be scheduled.”