Video conferencing fatigue

As people adjust to working from home due to the lock-down, people are taking note of the fact that it is tiring to spend time in video-conferencing on apps like zoom.

Photo by visuals on Unsplash

An interesting theory has been floated that takes into account some of the things that cause this to happen. Among those that are prominent is the fact that we tend to be distracted by notifications, losing our train of thought in the middle of conversations. This is also the case when one is multi-tasking.

Other reasons include the need to keep within the frame of view, which is taxing and lacking the luxury of the physical presence of the other people that allows us to gauge engagement, interest, rate of feedback (time lag in the case of delayed signals), etc.