www.hrreporter.com 9
person, the way they make gestures as
they speak is effortless. But when
they're on camera, they have to think
more about their gestures and how they
come across onscreen.
"What was once effortless is now
effortful, and that's tiring," says Hancock.
A third challenge? The selfie effect or
"digital mirror" of Zoom calls where
people see both themselves and the
person they're talking to.
"It's the equivalent of walking around
and having a mirror right beside your
friend's or your colleague's face, so now
you're talking not only to your friend
but also to a mirror," he says. "It's got
to be one of the strangest developments
for human communication ever."
While some self-awareness can be
On Zoom grids, faces are also bigger
in your field of view than they are
face-to-face. And while eye contact is
important — for example, someone on
stage lecturing to students — that can
also be tiring, says Hancock.
"It's like a huge energy rush, but also
draining," he says. "If you're doing that
for three, four or five hours in a day
while you're sitting at home and you're
not the speaker all the time, you're not
psychologically ramped up to give that
talk and get all that attention, then
that's when it starts to be different."
Cognitive overload, digital mirror
Another reason for the Zoom fatigue is
the idea of managing nonverbal
behaviour. When people meet in
valuable — so people know they're
presenting well, for example — "constant
self-awareness can increase anxiety and
even lead to depression," says Hancock.
A four th concern involves the
constraints to physical mobility.
In-person and audio phone conversa-
tions allow people to walk around and
move, but video calls require people to
stay very close to the computer camera
and sit in a limited frame.
New skills needed for new normal
T he idea that Z oom or online
communications are intrinsically
problematic is inaccurate, says Alex
Lindsay, head of operations at 090
Media in San Francisco.
"Once you have the skills to work
around it and once you understand
what you're looking at, it can be fun to
do those kinds of things," he says. "The
fatigue that people are talking about is
really, in my opinion, a discomfort that
is driven from not understanding how
to do these things."
The challenge really is that many
people were not prepared to use
Zoom and similar platforms when the
pandemic hit, so they got forced into it
quickly and haven't adjusted, he says.
If people treat something as if it's
temporary, they don't invest the time
and effort into making it work. But
people need to take this very seriously,
says Lindsay.
"I don't think that we're going back to
the way things were. I think that there's
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