Zoom calls and video meetings can lead to extreme fatigue: study

By Isobel Williams via SWNS

Zoom calls really do cause "extreme fatigue" in workers and students, reveals a new study.

Since the pandemic video calls have been a convenient way to attend work and school from home, but it may be causing more problems than it solves.

Researchers have found proof that video conferences and online education formats lead to greater fatigue than face-to-face alternatives.

Fatigue caused by video calls, also known as Zoom fatigue or video conference fatigue, is characterized by a feeling of tiredness and alienation due to too long or inappropriate video-based communication.

Researchers from the Graz University of Technology, Austria, have now managed to provide neurophysiological evidence of the.

Professor René Riedl said: "A better understanding of videoconference fatigue is important, as this phenomenon has a far-reaching impact on the well-being of individuals, interpersonal relationships and organizational communication."

To get their results the team did a neuroscientific study on a group of students to investigate videoconference fatigue in the context of online university lectures.

The participants took part in lectures that were held both in-person in a traditional lecture hall and online via video conferencing.

The findings, published in the journal Scientific Reports, showed that a 50-minute online lecture exhausted the test subjects "significantly more" than a lecture of the same length in the traditional face-to-face lecture hall format.

Professor Gernot Müller-Putz added: "A holistic view of the underlying psychological and physiological mechanisms is required to develop effective strategies for coping with the harmful effects of videoconference fatigue.”