Stanford study into Zoom Fatigue explains why video chats are so tiring

The first cause for Zoom Fatigue suggested by Bailenson is the state of stressed hyper-arousal generated by excessive stretches of close-up eye contact. Unlike an in-person meeting, where participants will shift from looking at a speaker to other activities, such as note taking, on Zoom everyone is always staring at everyone.

The anxiety generated by a number of faces staring at you can be likened to the stresses of public speaking but amplified to a degree regardless of who is talking. Bailenson explains, from a perceptual standpoint, Zoom turns every participant on a call into a constant speaker smothered with eye gaze.

Another factor at play compounding the stress of constant eye gaze can be the size of faces on your monitor. Landmark research from cultural anthropologist Edward Hall in the 1960s suggested interpersonal distance fundamentally influences emotion and behavior.

Summarizing Hall s work for the digital age, Bailenson says a person s intimate space spans a radius of about 60 cm (23 in). Interactions inside this space are generally reserved for family or intimate friends, but depending on your monitor size and Zoom settings, large faces of strangers can often be presented in close proximity.

In general, for most setups, if it s a one-on-one conversation when you re with coworkers or even strangers on video, you re seeing their face at a size which simulates a personal space that you normally experience when you re with somebody intimately, say Bailenson.

The short-term solutions to mitigate these issues are to reduce the size of your videoconferencing window, and try to move away from your computer monitor. The goal, Bailenson notes, is to increase the personal space between yourself and other Zoom participant s faces.

via newatlas.com

It’s indubitably a thing.