Since the Covid-19 pandemic hit, we are on video calls more than ever before, and many find it exhausting. Compared with face-to-face communication, a Zoom call “requires more focus than a face-to-face chat,” said Gianpiero Petriglieri, an associate professor at Insead. In fact, video chats require us to work even harder to process non-verbal cues, and it consumes way more energy than it would normally take.
So, in reality, Zoom fatigue is not only in your head. To find out more about this relatively new condition, Bored Panda reached out to Lina Survila, a global tech PR and chief editor at Abstract Stylist. Lina told us that since Zoom calls are now the “main source of interactions we have with other people,” it has changed our day-to-day lives in such a way that “we never truly get off the screens.”
“Our kids go to school via Zoom, we go to work meetings, and after, we even hang out with friends there,” Lina said and added that it has become “our next social, mental, and even physical problem to solve.” “With emotional health being one of the main topics during the pandemic, people tend to entertain themselves as much as possible to stay positive. But with that being the case, there's also exhaustion.”
Such fatigue manifests in the ways we now consume content online. “We see a positive increase in reading 'slow' content rather than quick news. For example, the most-read content on Abstract Stylist during the pandemic is outgrowing your friends, surviving breakups, and similar.”
Lina added that, “on the other hand, with digital life gone sour, all we can do is laugh and make the most of it.”
On the other hand, our intense online presence isn’t the only cause for Zoom fatigue and lockdown, social isolation, and the lack of entertainment are all feeding in. As a result, it no longer matters whether we are introverts or extroverts; people are all getting equally exhausted as the disruption during the unprecedented pandemic has touched virtually everyone.
According to Professor Petriglieri, the ways we communicate during a pandemic has our social roles collapsing since everything we do happens in one confined digital space. “Imagine if you go to a bar, and in the same bar, you talk with your professors, meet your parents, or date someone. Isn’t it weird? That's what we're doing now… We are confined in our own space, in the context of a very anxiety-provoking crisis, and our only space for interaction is a computer window.”
Even if we Zoom in to see our friends for a virtual party, it’s essentially the same kind of meeting we had an hour ago with our coworkers. “It doesn't matter whether you call it a virtual happy hour, it's a meeting, because mostly we are used to using these tools for work,” explained Gianpiero Petriglieri. For this reason, it’s becoming almost impossible to shift from the daily tasks and commitments, whether they’re work-related or take your free time.
