What Makes Zoom So Stressful...It's Mating or Fighting

Zoom Fatigue. We’ve all felt it. After a day or even a couple of hours of calls. You’re pretty fried where you probably wouldn’t be with just a phone call.

So what’s the difference?

Professor Jeremy Bailenson from the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab has studied this for a while and has four reasons that these calls make you exhausted.

Face to face time for our particular type of mammals indicates an intense or intimate event. In other words that much eye contact with that much close focus on someones face indicated that we’re either about to get busy or duke it out.
Performing into a mirror…You don’t usually see yourself when you’re talking. It’s tiring because it splits your attention. You’ll see lots of people in Zoom calls that can’t look at the screen when they are presenting because they find their own performance too distracting
Reduced mobility…You have to stay in screen and you don’t want to show off that you’re really just Donald Ducking it (Shirt but no pants) so you can’t move around as much as you normally do.
You’re thinking harder…Why? No non-verbal cues. I have a co-worker who, when he hates an idea, his jaw clicks…You can’t tell that over Zoom…You’re not getting non-verbal cues so you’re thinking and trying harder.

Research goes on into how to make it better…I have to go…I have another Zoom call.