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Researchers at Stanford University in Silicon Valley Confirmed What Millions of Teleworkers Already Know: ‘Zoom Fatigue’ Causes More Stress Than Real-Life Meetings Due to ‘Non-verbal Overload’ of Calls endless video.
A study by Jeremy Bailenson, professor of communications and founding director of the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab, found that the underlying causes of zoom fatigue include “excessive amounts of close gaze” and “increased self-report while watching a video of yourself “.
“Zoom users see reflections of themselves at a frequency and for a duration that have never been seen before in media history – and possibly in human history,” Bailenson wrote.
Some of these problems could be solved with “insignificant changes” in Zoom’s user interface, he suggested, such as the automatic hiding of the “selfie” window that mirrors the user in on themselves after the first few. seconds of a call.
Bailenson also recommended that Zoom users themselves could make simple changes to reduce tension, like reducing the size of the video window so that other faces don’t feel so close.
More video conferences should simply be conducted in the form of phone calls, he added.
Article by Bailenson, published this week in the journal Technology, mind and behavior, is touted by Stanford as the “first peer-reviewed paper that systematically deconstructs Zoom fatigue from a psychological perspective”.
It is accompanied by a separate, not yet peer-reviewed study that uses a “Zoom Exhaustion and Fatigue” scale to measure impact. After thousands of people filled out a questionnaire, Bailenson said there was “good theoretical reason to predict” that women were affected more than men by seeing videos of themselves all day.
Millions of knowledge workers around the world have now spent the best part of the year in spare bedrooms and home offices, as the pandemic and waves of lockouts have forced offices to close.
Video conferencing applications such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet have exploded. Zoom’s share price nearly quadrupled last year, giving it a market value of over $ 100 billion.
Bailenson said he thought Zoom was “awesome” and “worked great,” but had become a “punch bag” for frustrated office workers. “We can’t control a lot of our lives, but we can scream about Zoom,” he said in an interview with the FT.
He acknowledged that Zoom’s fatigue issues paled compared to the daily traumas faced by medical staff in overcrowded hospitals. Even in developed countries, millions of people do not have access to reliable broadband connections, and many cannot afford the equipment necessary to make video calls.
Nonetheless, Stanford research points to the mental burden of being forced to sit in front of a camera and stare at screens filled with faces – including ours.
“On Zoom, behavior usually reserved for close relationships – like long periods of direct gaze and faces up close – suddenly became the way we interact with casual acquaintances, colleagues and even strangers,” Bailenson wrote. .
Bailenson said he tried to talk to Zoom about his findings, but was “still waiting for this meeting to be scheduled.”
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