Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, Doxy.me (what I use for my practice); these video conferencing platforms have become ubiquitous for a large portion of the working population. Students, parents, grandparents and friends also all rely on this relatively new form of communication to keep in touch with others. Over the past year, it has almost completely replaced real life face to face human interaction for many.
While on the surface, video conferencing is certainly superior to the telephone (how quaint), there are also negative consequences, including the much talked about ‘zoom fatigue’. How it impacts us is being carefully considered and studied as we can assume it will continue to be prominent in our way of working, communicating and relating to others into the future.
Because video communication has become such a big part of our lives, is important we know and understand how it affects our brains, our eyes, our physiology, our relationships and our productivity in order to determine best practices, and avoid the pitfalls of this technology. It’s interesting to note that there are differences in study results, depending on personality, gender, ethnicity, etc. as it relates to measures of emotional fatigue, motivational fatigue, visual fatigue, social fatigue and general fatigue from video conferencing.
If interested, take a test developed by Stanford University here to see where you stand in relation to the thousands of others who have taken the survey. And if curious about some of the early conclusions, take a look at the following article.
See you on doxy.me soon !
