Your Brain and Zoom Fatigue

We’ve all likely experienced Zoom fatigue and read all the tips about how to recover. But do you know why video conferencing on platforms like Zoom is so taxing for the brain?

Psychologists continue to debate several theories about this. One Seattle-based brain expert and author of the Brain Rules book series, John Medina, runs through the list of possible theories:

Without the body language cues, it’s hard to know when someone is about to speak, so we experience anxiety around interrupting others or being interrupted ourselves. Our brains compensate by trying to supply the missing non-verbal information, which can lead to cognitive overload.

Taking in the visual information available on top of listening to audio taxes our brains differently from talking on the phone, for instance.

The only way to have a conversation via video is to stare into the camera, but maintaining that much eye contact is not normal. When someone stares at us for longer than 3.2 seconds, our brains perceive it as a threat, and that triggers our fight-or-flight response.

Because Zoom simulates an up-close-and-personal conversation, it sets off our proximity sensors. In real life, when we’re that close to someone, it usually means one of two things: sex or combat.

In sum, our brains do not perceive video conversations as normal. And the mental energy it takes to pretend we’re having a normal conversation exhausts our brains and negatively impacts our mental health. This much you probably already knew. But in this article, I focus on the arguments for two of these theories: being forced to stare into another’s eyes and being forced to feel up close and personal.

Nonverbal communication

Because Zoom fatigue is a relatively new phenomenon, there haven’t yet been many scientific studies completed or published on this topic. However, we can refer to previous studies concerning nonverbal communication and formulate some hypotheses based on other scientific findings.

First, eye contact plays a big role in nonverbal communication, and science tells us exactly when direct eye contact becomes creepy. According to one study exploring social norms, participants watched video clips of actors who appeared to be looking directly at them for various lengths of time. Subjects reported that, on average, they felt comfortable with 3.2 seconds or less of eye contact. Anything more, and the staring felt too intense.

Or consider what happens in an elevator. In a full elevator, we’re forced to violate another social norm: We must stand very close to strangers. As a result, we tend to look down or look away from others to minimize eye contact. In other words, people decrease one cue to compensate for an unavoidable increase in another. We don’t have this option during video conferencing.

On Zoom, behavior that we would ordinarily only experience with close relationships, such as long stretches of direct eye contact and seeing faces close up, has become the way we interact with everyone from casual acquaintances to complete strangers. Let’s unpack each of these two components.

Staring at another’s eyes

Anyone who has spoken in front of a crowd of people understands that being stared at is physiologically and psychologically arousing. But video conferencing software like Zoom beams everyone’s face to everyone. Essentially, it turns listeners into speakers. Now you feel like you’re being stared at, even when you’re not speaking.

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Contrast this with an in-person meeting in a conference room. Listeners don’t typically look at each other unless they’re having a sidebar conversation. Instead, people look at the person who’s speaking or their slides, or they look down or away, and most keep their heads and eyes moving throughout the meeting.

But with Zoom, you get the straight, front-on view of all participants nonstop. It’s as if you’re trapped in a crowded elevator, forced to stare directly into the eyes of the person you’re closest to, only somehow, everyone is crowded into your view, staring back at you. It’s no wonder we feel overstimulated.

Getting up close and personal

What do we mean when we say we’re seeing faces close up on Zoom? We mean that the size of the faces on our computer screens is similar to the size of faces when we see our loved ones up close. Medina calls this the “big head” theory of Zoom fatigue. And to our ancestors on the Serengeti, seeing a face close up meant one of two things: They were about to have sex, or they were about to fight.

According to anthropologist Edward T. Hall, who first coined the phrase “personal space,” for the average Westerner, anything closer than about 60 cm is considered intimate. In one informal experiment, Stanford professor of communications Jeremy N. Bailenson found that he needed to be about 50 cm away from someone in a one-on-one conversation for their head to be the same size as the head of someone during a one-on-one Zoom meeting on a laptop (13 cm). This means that, on Zoom, your colleagues feel as if they are invading your interpersonal space (not to mention your privacy, as you join the call from your bedroom/makeshift office).

And Bailenson found the same holds true in group settings. The faces in a grid on Zoom are bigger in one’s field of vision than they are during face-to-face meetings when we account for how groups naturally space themselves in a physical conference room.

Of course, the size of the faces of our video conferencing colleagues will depend on how many are on the call, screen size, as well as how close or far away we’re sitting from the screen. So one easy way to make Zoom feel less like an energy suck is to shrink the size of your window and push your chair back from your computer if possible.

Video conferencing is here to stay.

On the whole, Zoom has been an essential part of our lives during the pandemic, and it’s likely not going anywhere. It has enabled human connection over long distances, allowed us to continue working remotely, and remains a social lifeline in our new normal.

It’s possible that Zoom fatigue will lessen as we continue to use video conferencing and learn to read the new social cues. Still, that doesn’t help much if you’re feeling overstimulated now. So what can you do if you’re feeling this way? First, know that you’re not alone and have compassion for yourself. Also, swap out video meetings for phone meetings, if possible, and try walking at the same time. Walking meetings are known to increase creativity and reduce anxiety.

Video conferencing zaps our mental energy. But understanding more about why helps us cope. Hopefully, future scientific findings will help software developers to design more user-friendly interfaces.