Since videoconferencing skyrocketed in popularity during the pandemic, use of such technology has soared. So have anecdotal accounts of what some call “Zoom fatigue” — a unique state of exhaustion reported by those who feel wrung out after video calls. https://t.co/V9tUN9aqmH
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) November 26, 2023
Small study, biased observers, all the usual caveats. Still… From the Washington Post, “‘Zoom fatigue’ may take toll on the brain and the heart, researchers say” [unpaywalled gift link]:
Does a session on Zoom, FaceTime or Microsoft Teams leave you drained and listless?…
A recent brain-monitoring study supports the phenomenon, finding a connection between videoconferencing in educational settings and physical symptoms linked to fatigue.
The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, looked for physiological signs of fatigue in 35 students attending lectures on engineering at an Austrian university. Half of the class attended the 50-minute lecture via videoconference in a nearby lab and a face-to-face lecture the following week, while the other half attended first in person, then online.
Participants were monitored with electroencephalogram (EEG) and electrocardiogram (ECG) instruments that recorded electrical activity in the brain and their heart rhythms. They also participated in surveys about their mood and fatigue levels…
There were “notable” differences between the in-person and online groups, the researchers write. Video participants’ fatigue mounted over the course of the session, and their brain states showed they were struggling to pay attention. The groups’ moods varied, too, with in-person participants reporting they felt livelier, happier and more active, and online participants saying they felt tired, drowsy and “fed up.”
Overall, the researchers write, the study offers evidence of the physical toll of videoconferencing and suggests that it “should be considered as a complement to face-to-face interaction, but not as a substitute.”
They say the research should be replicated in business settings and homes to get a more accurate sense of how such sessions affect participants, calling for further studies that include more portions of the brain and a broader participant base…
If nothing else, it’s probably useful to know there’s actual physical effects, if only to be prepared in advance.
Open Thread: The Rise of Anger
schrodingers_cat
Turning off your camera if you are not the one presenting is a good way to avoid this.
Leto
I think all of this can be summed up as: this could’ve been an email.
schrodingers_cat
@Leto: I left a non-profit org for which I volunteered (I was the Treasurer) because of the propensity of the retired members of the teams to have incessant meetings.
schrodingers_cat
OT: Art break
From Hanna Karlzon’s Daydreams
I have used 3 types of pencils, two types of markers and watercolors.
Mr. Bemused Senior
I have never felt fatigue after a BJ Zoom.
Urza
Smart companies don’t force everyone to use video all the time. Just when necessary or sometimes the managers seem to do it more often. Voice only is not as tedious as worrying about what everyones doing on camera. And I doubt that most people get much out of video that they wouldn’t get out of just voice.
Gin & Tonic
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Neither have I.
Perhaps that is because I have never joined.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Gin & Tonic: ah, the control group.
Anne Laurie
@schrodingers_cat: Gawgeous!
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I’ve done a lot of Zoom since 2020 of course, just like everybody else. But when I left the full time workforce in 2017, conferences were all audio-only. I suppose Zoom adds the ability to share a screen, and in theory collaborate on a screen though I’ll bet nobody knows that.
I don’t see that putting the participants’ faces on screen adds anything.
Collaborative white boarding was a thing we did with our granddaughter during lockdown, to draw silly art. I don’t think I’ve used it otherwise.
Poe Larity
Someone educated read the paper and let me know if the zoom cohort was actually only watching the zoom and not watching John’s TikTok channel.
Leto
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Similar experience. I left the workforce in 2019, and previous to that it was majority conference phone calls. Rarely did we have a video conference style meeting, mainly because it was a PITA to get the equipment setup, or to reserve the commander’s conference room to have it.
The majority of our most productive meeting times were small groups, specifically focused on just a few topics. Cover the relevant topics/issues at hand, in/out, move along. I’m so glad I was deployed for the majority of one of our commander’s short leadership turn. Apparently dude would have like… 4 hour meetings. It was insane. Everyone hated it, hated their lives, and it got to the point where unless you were needed specifically for something, your bosses did everything in the world to keep you out of there.
Nukular Biskits
@schrodingers_cat:
Nice work!
Nukular Biskits
Never used Zoom.
My company and most gov’t employees (at least those working for the Navy programs with which I’m associated) use MS Teams.
As several noted above, generally I have the camera off unless there’s some compelling reason to show my face.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Like.
dlwchico
I’m leery of reports like this being part of the anti-WFH propaganda.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@schrodingers_cat: beautiful.
Omnes Omnibus
@dlwchico: I know this comes as a surprise to many people here, but there are a lot of people in the world who do not want to work from home even if their job can be done from home.
Bill Arnold
@Omnes Omnibus:
What is your point? Are you arguing that anti-WFH propaganda does not exist?
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Surely someone has studied this, yes? I would love to know what the percentages are. It also seems like they would have to control for how much interacting you need to do with others in order to do your job.
Bill Arnold
@schrodingers_cat:
That can help. I mostly keep the camera on (microphone off) as a social prod to maintain focus on the meeting, but mentally focus mostly on the audio unless e.g. slides are being shared.
Mix of Zoom, MS Teams, Google Meet, and occasional Slack huddles.
smith
Is it to soon to post an off-thread comment? I was interested to learn jut now that the stock market is the latest victim of Bidenomics:
How can this be? Unemployment is down! Wages are up! Shouldn’t we have 10% inflation and see businesses shuttering all over the country as we plunge into a recession?
Omnes Omnibus
@Bill Arnold: My point is that, since there are people want actual interpersonal contact, data that supports this conclusion isn’t necessarily anti-WFH propaganda.
satby
@Gin & Tonic: me either. I had to take part in so many Web-ex trainings, meetings, etc. when I worked I refuse to do any of that now.
Jobeth
@schrodingers_cat: Our company just mandated cameras on during Teams meetings. Apparently people multi-task when not on camera (I know I do) and too much important info being covered in meetings wasn’t getting through. I have mixed feelings about this. It is respectful to the person presenting but O Lordy how some people can drone on!
zhena gogolia
I’m happy not to teach on Zoom, but Zoom is helping me keep in good touch with distant friends, so I’m grateful for it. And when it’s a meeting in which someone just talks at you (of which I have to attend a lot), I’d rather do that on Zoom than have to schlep somewhere.
satby
@Omnes Omnibus: I don’t understand why people don’t get that. I worked with lots of people who liked the structure of working in places other than home, and the ability to clearly separate their work and home lives.
TriassicSands
I have had a few Zoom doctor’s appointments and many, many telephone appointments. The Zoom appointments didn’t improve anything for me. I can listen without needing to watch. If someone has something specific and useful to show someone and that needs simultaneous explaining, then Zoom away. Otherwise, I prefer phone appointments.
C Stars
@zhena gogolia: I hate Zoom, but have found this to be very true: for advocacy, volunteer work, etc., knowing that you don’t have to shlep somewhere (and you don’t have to ask other people to shlep somewhere, and you don’t have to figure out a venue to meet, etc.) can mean more capacity for engagement and productivity.
Most of my clients simply don’t do zoom (or if we do use it, we have our cameras off). But I am taking a writing class now that meets via Zoom for two hours weekly, and it’s really, really hard for me to have my camera on the whole time. As the article says, it’s exhausting to be staring into a screen and trying to engage with people like that.
zhena gogolia
@C Stars: Yes, two hours is too much. One hour is my limit for active engagement with camera on.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
In fact, you enliven the rest of us!
Old Dan and Little Ann
I had to teach 1 day a week via zoom and I hated every second of it. I could probably remember how to set up a meeting but I would never want to again. Ugh.
SiubhanDuinne
@schrodingers_cat:
That is magnificent. I have some rather nice, though very different from yours, pages of mandalas and geometric patterns I have coloured over the past few months. They are packed up in boxes at the moment, but once I am moved and resettled, I’ll figure out how to share them on BJ.
satby
I wonder if they’ll study (or have studied) how tools like Zoom have enabled more erosion between work / home and public / private spaces and what the effects of that are. Pretty much all of us lived full and happy lives pre-cell phone; and would probably have reacted with horror at the idea of being instantly contactable all the time, everywhere we went. Now, it’s normal and it’s cause for concern when we leave the house without our phones.
frosty
@Omnes Omnibus: I am one of them. When I had to work OT, I’d go into the office on a Saturday instead of working from home. I’m lucky I retired just as COVID hit. Once they switched to WFH I would have retired and walked away right then and there.
Baud
@satby:
Speak for yourself, lady!
eclare
@schrodingers_cat:
Gorgeous! Love the colors.
eclare
@Omnes Omnibus:
As long as the commute isn’t bad, thirty minutes max, I do not like WFH.
eclare
@Baud:
How did people wait in line, at a Dr’s, etc. before cell phones?
Baud
@eclare:
I had so many boring times where I had nothing to do, no one to talk to, no webpages to refresh.
WhatsMyNym
@satby: You don’t actually need to answer your cellphone. Most folks just text me unless they want to hear my lovely voice.
I’ve had a cellphone since the late 90’s, I think think they’re great and I’m not a heavy user of the phone or any apps.
artem1s
Zoom and COVID probably saved me an ulcer (and maybe my job) in 2020/21. The team I worked with was big on multiple in-person meetings with tone policing and demands that everyone ‘show up’ in the proper approved way. Zoom added a layer that the more abusive members of the team could not penetrate. Bullying people at a distance is quite as much fun.
I watched one member come completely undone during a team retreat (2 days long FFS) because the members of the team she disapproved of most were allowed to shut off their camera during breaks and reflection time. It made her nuts that she couldn’t keep an eye on everyone. It was quite amusing actually.
As returning to work came closer to reality, it was clear to me I needed to make a change. I was really thankful I had time during COVID to switch departments. After that I found myself looking forward to returning to in-person work. However, the tension of having to be in office is rising again in several departments that are no longer allowed to do hybrid. COVID gave a lot of people a break from the everyday grind. Zoom might be fatiguing but a lot of people are suddenly remembering they didn’t really miss working with (certain) people as much as they thought.
dexwood
@Baud: Time for a book or a magazine.
Lyrebird
Ding! Certainly there are forces simply hostile to WFH, but if we could get honest votes from a big number of people, I suspect that home situations would be as big a factor as personality differences. Certainly, the more people or maybe specifically the more generations of people in the home, the more eager I am to get to the office somewhere ELSE.
Of course it depends on the work, too! Editing, crunching numbers? Home. Teaching? I’m with @zhena gogolia: much better to teach in person if possible. I will have to find a new position next year, and I am currently more likely to leave teaching than to take an all-remote teaching job.
Bill Arnold
@Omnes Omnibus:
OK, fair enough. I haven’t looked in detail at that study, or poked at its funding.
On a skim, it is not about meetings. It is a very small study, with
– in-person engineering lecture, but with no tinteraction with the professor allowed beyond I presume eye contact, and with incidental social contact with other humans in the room allowed for in-person attendees.
– vs viewing of a recording of the engineering lecture.
(then with roles swapped for a second lecture.)
So, needs replication, and similar experiments in other environments, and in gatherings with more interactivity, like interactive meetings. (And careful attention paid to the greedneeds of commercial real estate interests. :-)
I am reminding of the absolute certainty expressed by social scientists advocating for open plan offices that such environments must (it is obvious!) enhance productivity and creativity. Actually studies provided mixed results, some showing degraded productivity and creativity, and reduced face-to-face colloaboration.
Lyrebird
@artem1s:
Yikes, I am glad you could make a move!
Bill Arnold
@satby:
I always have my phone around, and it is almost always on vibrate. (Very occasionally will leave the sound on if expecting an important phone call in some narrow time interval.)
Dan B
@SiubhanDuinne: My take on the BJ Zoom is people are relaxed and energized. Their body language reflects that. In work meetings the rigid body language looks exhausting. Also it’s difficult to read body language which is a major component of communication. Audio only allows us to focus on the vital subtleties of tone and phrasing, the audible version of non verbal communication. I’d be interested to know the difference in fatigue levels in people who had to appear engaged while primarily listening versus people who did the majority of the talking or who led the meeting.
Ben Cisco
My job does not mandate camera use during meetings – judging from the number of taped-over cameras I encounter, probably a good thing 😆.
WFH isn’t the worst thing ever, but I have turned down full-time WFH positions. I don’t prefer it, but also all it takes is a management shift / merger / acquisition for the conditions to change. No thanks.
lowtechcyclist
@satby:
For me, it’s more because if my car breaks down or something, where the heck am I going to find a pay phone nowadays?
Snarki, child of Loki
I find that Zoom is a near-perfect cure for insomnia,
and have napped through many sessions.
Ben Cisco
@lowtechcyclist: What are these “pay phones” of which you speak?
Actually, I remember most of the ones I encountered being quite inoperative.
lowtechcyclist
My agency has been entirely WFH since 2020 since they decided to take advantage of the fact that we were already out of the office to entirely redo our office space. Since it’s the government, it’s taking much longer than originally expected (original timetable was we’d be back in the fall of 2022, now they‘ll be back in the spring of 2024).
Fortunately, they don’t expect us to have our cameras on during our MS Teams meetings, and so hardly anyone does. (No need to tape over the camera, you just click a button on the screen to turn video on and off.)
Unfortunately, they didn’t try to rent some space for those of us who would have preferred working in an office. Which shouldn’t have been hard to do, with so many people in the DC area working from home nowadays. My home workspace is extremely inadequate for full-time WFH (3 square feet of desk space just isn’t enough), so it was hard just to stay organized, let alone productive. But in 19 days, it’ll all be Somebody Else’s Problem.
TriassicSands
@Ben Cisco:
An important consideration, at least to me, is climate change. WFH means many fewer miles driven and much less carbon released into the atmosphere. At some point, people are going to have to face changing their lifestyles. Waiting for the deus ex machina to come along is not a plan for a livable planet. We are still a long way from EVs dominating the roads.
Mousebumples
I largely WFH, and I think meeting culture varies largely be department, even within a company.
(a employee resource group I’m involved in had a meeting last week on Why Meetings Suck And How To Fix Them, and I kept having cognitive dissonance with their complaints)
When my small 6 person team meets online, we have our cameras on. When I’m in larger meetings, where I’m not presenting, I 100% have my camera off. Heck, when I’m presenting, people having their camera on can distract me!
Best thing(s) about WFH, for me, with 2 young kiddos is that if I need to skip my shower until lunchtime, if we’re running late in the morning, I can do that. 😅
lowtechcyclist
@Ben Cisco:
I know, right? I honestly can’t remember when was the last time I saw one.
lowtechcyclist
@TriassicSands:
This is a big plus of WFH. And a more personal reward is that without that daily commute, those of us working from home are putting way fewer miles on our cars, which means they should last a good deal longer, which means more years without having to make car payments.
Ben Cisco
@TriassicSands: Salient point. And to be clear, if my employer says WFH full time, OK (until a box breaks anyway).
Ben Cisco
@lowtechcyclist: I’ve seen stripped-out husks, and even then it’s been at least 20 years.
schrodingers_cat
@eclare: Thanks!
schrodingers_cat
@SiubhanDuinne: I am looking forward to them. I have finished some Kerby Rosanes spreads too. I don’t think I have posted them here though.
schrodingers_cat
@Anne Laurie: @Baud: @Nukular Biskits: Thanks
cintibud
Hi Anne,
I sent you an email last night to request a blue sky invite but since I haven’t heard anything I guess I must have made a mistake in the address. If you have any more invites left, could you please send one to me?
[email protected]
Thanks.
Miss Bianca
@lowtechcyclist: It’s getting to the point where anything I see set in say, the 90s, immediately feels incredibly dated to me if I see a pay phone!
ETA: But they still existed into the 2000s – I remember the exact moment that I realized I needed to get a cell phone, which was when I was at the Denver airport and I had to make a bunch of long-distance calls – remember those rip-off long distance cards? – Yeah, I went through a bunch of dinero on that one.
Sister Golden Bear
Obviously there are some people who prefer working outside the home, and I don’t have a problem with that. I know people who prefer to be in the office not only for social reasons, which are entirely valid, but also find working at home to be problematic due to kids, other members of the household, lack of decent places to work. And yes, WFH can blur work/not work in ways that aren’t great.
But a big part of the push back against forced WFH are due to office conditions. In Silicon Valley the norm is you’re working at a long table shoulder-to-shoulder with your co-workers in a large open space. Not infrequently with at least 1-3 conversations going on nearby, because the justification for veal-pen conditions is “increased collaborations” doncha know. For me, even with headphones it’s extremely hard to concentrate. I’ll also note the executives who extol the virtues of open offices never seem to actually work in those spaces — they’ve all got offices.
The second factor for the pushback is that it also often involves broken promises by management. I.e. they said WFH would be a permanent option, and they’re reneging on it. And the justifications given are often transparently BS, and seem driven more by management feeling that if they can’t physically see their
serfsworkers at their desks, their employees aren’t really working.Jackie
@lowtechcyclist:
Exactly that. A few years ago my car blew a tire on the freeway. I’d forgotten my cellphone and even after popping the hood up and standing outside of the car, nobody stopped to see if I needed help. I assume everyone whipping by assumed I used my cellphone to call for help. It took almost two hours before someone finally stopped and let me use his phone so I could call Road Assistance. Never ever left home without making sure my phone was in my purse after that!
Central Planning
I’m in sales, so I prefer an office or being out with customers. I find WFH… boring. I used to have an office close to my house (less than 5 miles) so I would always go in there. Even if nobody was there, I would never know if I would see something new on the short drive. Or maybe I would stop for coffee. It was something that broke up the monotony of the day.
I’m not a fan of people turning off their cameras during video calls. I leave mine on almost all the time. If I’m the one talking, I would like to know when people are paying attention, or they lift their eyes up to see what I’m going on about. Someone mentioned audio feedback is important. If people are muted and their video is off, there is ZERO feedback you are getting. I’d rather people own up to multi-tasking by leaving their cameras on and doing some other work. I’m not expecting anyone to stare at the screen the entire time.
Villago Delenda Est
So, Zoom meetings are like face to face meetings. Usually a total waste of time.
Villago Delenda Est
@Sister Golden Bear: Management? Breaking promises? ZOMG, get me a fainting couch, stat!
satby
@WhatsMyNym: Ok, thanks Captain Obvious, I wasn’t aware I didn’t need to always answer my phone. Knew someone would helpfully explain.
I was an early adopter, since I worked for a cell phone company early in my IT career, way before most people I knew had cell phones and were still using those mobile bricks. My point wasn’t about how I use my phone, it was about how our expectations about availability evolved, and whether anyone ever studied the knock on effects of the psychological loss of “alone” time.
Soprano2
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m one of them. I could have worked from home but didn’t want to. I hate how some people worship WFH. We had some bad stuff happen with people during Covid doing WFH – saying they were working while at the lake with their kids (they weren’t), stuff like that. There was resentment over how some people were perceived to be goofing off at home while others had to come to the office. It wasn’t that good for us. There are reasons to be together in some workplaces. ETA sometimes I think people who don’t ever turn on their camera or mic aren’t really there.
Soprano2
@Bill Arnold: And you immediately proved the point by implying Omnes said something he didn’t say.
George
I work for an agency that uses MS Teams and lately there has been a push for people to have their cameras on, but it is more of upper management thuggery and control than anything. Just because someone is staring at the camera doesn’t mean they are paying attention. It just means they are good actors who furrow their brows and nod their heads every so often.
The thing, too, is that not everyone in an in-person meeting is watching the speaker intently. Some people are taking or reading their notes. Some people are staring out the window not because they are bored, but because they are processing what is being said and preparing a question or response. Some people are making eye contact with other staff members and communicating relevant stuff through raised eyebrows. You can’t do that via video because the implicit assumption is that everyone on camera is looking only at the person speaking.
If upper management actually was honest and said that it wanted us to turn on our cameras because it doesn’t trust us, that’d be one thing. But of course instead management gives lame-ass excuses, such as having cameras on helps us connect better as a staff, etc. Just one more reason why my particular agency remains near the bottom of the annual federal employee viewpoint surveys.
OzarkHillbilly
Not a problem for me.