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Tired of Back-to-Back Online Meetings? Zoom Fatigue is Worse for Women

Tired of Back-to-Back Online Meetings? Zoom Fatigue is Worse for Women
Do you feel exhausted following video conference calls?

Virtual meetings are more tiring than traditional meetings. Zoom Fatigue affects women more than men, according to a Stanford study. Read on to find out why.

Written by Longjam Dineshwori |Updated : April 16, 2021 10:22 AM IST

Virtual meetings have replaced traditional face-to-face meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic. Working from home and attending meetings online may sound exciting, but they are actually more draining than in-person meetings. As working from home become the new normal during COVID-19, many of us are spending a lot of time on video meeting applications like Zoom. Have you ever found completely drained after back-to-back online meetings in a day? If yes, you're not alone. A lot of people are dealing with what is called as 'Zoom fatigue.' It is greater for women than men, according to a new Stanford University research released on the Social Science Research Network. Overall, one in seven women (13.8 per cent) reported feeling "very" to "extremely" fatigued after Zoom calls compared with one in 20 men (5.5 per cent), the researchers said.

As stated in the study, the feeling of exhaustion among women was mostly contributed by the increase in "self-focused attention", which is triggered by the self-view in video conferencing. Self-focused attention, according to the researchers, is a heightened awareness of how one comes across or how one appears in a conversation. Prolonged self-focus can produce negative emotions, or "mirror anxiety," said co-author of the new study Jeffrey Hancock, Professor of Communication in the School of Humanities and Sciences.

To reduce self-focused attention, the researchers suggested changing the default display settings to turn off "self-view." While women attend the same number of meetings per day as men, the duration of their meetings tend to be longer. This is another reason why women are more likely to experience Zoom fatigue than men. In addition, the researchers found that women were less likely to take breaks between meetings, which increased their weariness.

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The need to stay centred in the camera's field of view makes women feel being physically trapped and this is also one of the factors that contributes to an increase in Zoom fatigue among women. To avoid this, the study authors suggested moving farther away from the screen or turning off one's video during parts of calls.

Zoom Meetings vs Traditional Meetings

Earlier, the Stanford research team had explored why people might feel exhausted following video conference calls. The findings of the study were published in the journal Technology, Mind and Behaviour. Virtual meetings are more tiring than traditional meetings and the reasons are many. You make more effort and you brain works harder during virtual conversations, compared to face-to-face meetings. Here are some factors online meetings more tiring than face-to-face ones:

  • We make more effort emotionally to appear interested during the zoom calls.
  • We have to focus on the speakers' words while maintaining the eye contact on the computer screen.
  • Read people's facial expressions as well as decode the tone at the same time. Delay in verbal responses during virtual connections makes more difficult to interpret the words of the speaker.
  • In a face-to-face meeting, we miss out on a lot of non-verbal cues that can convey our feelings and attitudes, such as gestures, posture and the distance between the communicators.

To avoid Zoom fatigue, try to keep meetings short and on agenda, take breaks when you can or choose audio-only in between, schedule one day a week with no meetings, and reschedule meetings if you're too tired.

With inputs from agencies