How video calls create strain for employees
How video calls create strain for employees
BoomPop Team · 3/7/2022
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The world changed in 2020: people found they could work from anywhere and still be effective at their jobs.
This presented a ton of opportunities, but also a ton of challenges. Namely: how do you keep people feeling together, while apart? We were feeling this pain ourselves, which is why we started BoomPop, to create the best place for groups to find really fun things to do together.
Along the way, we learned a lot about what makes us feel connected to our teams and how to stay sane while working remote.
Let’s start with the science. Why are video calls so freaking exhausting? We now have great data to help answer that question. Researchers at Stanford zeroed in on four main reasons that video chats exhaust us:
Eye contact overload!
In a video chat, it feels like everyone is looking directly into your eyes, all of the time. It turns out that alone causes stress. What’s more is the size of people’s faces may be similar/larger than real life. Strangely this causes “our brains interpret it as an intense situation that is either going to lead to mating or to conflict.” (Decline! Decline!)
Mirror anxiety
Just ask Narcissus—staring at your reflection too much can have weird results. Clinical studies have revealed that prolonged exposure to our own appearance makes us more critical of ourselves. Yet that’s the literal default setting on most video chat platforms. Yay!
Feeling physically trapped
When you’re on a video chat, you keep yourself unnaturally still without realizing it. This taxes your mind and body. Besides the fact that sitting perfectly still can take a lot of energy, less movement during the day makes us less productive.
Brain drain
During video calls, our brains actually work harder. They have to send and receive more signals than in an in-person or phone conversation. As a Stanford researcher put it, “You’ve got to make sure that your head is framed within the center of the video. If you want to show someone that you are agreeing with them, you have to do an exaggerated nod or put your thumbs up. That adds cognitive load as you’re using mental calories in order to communicate.”
Bonus fact:
Zoom fatigue doesn’t affect everyone equally. In fact, ongoing research from the same Stanford team has found that women experience nearly 14% more Zoom fatigue than men.
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