As the Covid-19 pandemic first gripped the world, remote work became a novelty, brought about by government restrictions. People seemed to enjoy this new way of working. However, as time crawled on, we began to feel tired of video calls and remote work. We missed the in-person connections we used to have, and too much screen time was making us feel exhausted.
We’re beginning to gain a greater understanding of why screen time tires us out so much. Research from Stanford University highlights how staring at screens for too long affects our energy levels. This study identifies four main problems caused by excessive screen time and offers some strategies to help combat fatigue and stress.
Why video calls make us tired
The first reason for feeling drained during video calls is that they’re different from face-to-face meetings. The researchers argue that constantly looking at people up close on a screen is not natural and is very tiring. When we meet people in person, we often glance around or take notes, but on a video call, we tend to keep our eyes fixed on the screen.
This intense eye contact is similar to how we feel when giving a speech, with many eyes on us at once. Unlike a live audience, on Zoom, we can see everyone’s faces very clearly. In fact, during one-on-one video calls, your colleague’s face can seem unnaturally close, almost invading your personal space.
While this suggests a degree of mental overload, research from Aalto University suggests the problem may actually be one of mental “underload”.
Lack of stimulation
“We expected to find that people get stressed in remote meetings. But the result was the opposite—especially those who were not engaged in their work quickly became drowsy during remote meetings,” the researchers explain.
They examined the heart rate of participants in a series of both virtual and face-to-face meetings with the aim of understanding the fatigue levels they experienced.
“We combined physiological methods with ethnographic research. We shadowed each subject for two workdays, recording all events with time stamps, to find out the sources of human physiological responses,” the authors explain.
Engagement matters
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the researchers found that our general level of engagement at work matters a great deal. After testing for attitude and engagement, they found that the nature of the meeting didn’t really matter to people who were enthusiastic about their job.
“They were able to stay active even during virtual meetings<” the researchers say. “On the other hand, workers whose work engagement was low and who were not very enthusiastic about their work found virtual meetings very tiring.”
As with previous studies, the researchers found that it’s generally easier for us to maintain a degree of focus when meetings are face-to-face, as virtual meetings often provide limited cognitive cues or sensory input to help us. This can be especially so if the cameras of participants are turned off, as this results in a lack of stimuli, which, in turn, may result in people multitasking to fill that void.
Generally speaking, a degree of stimulation is good during meetings, but multitasking in any meeting is problematic. Instead, the researchers believe that tasks that don’t require much thinking, such as walking about the room, are all that can realistically be done during a virtual meeting without having a negative impact.
“Walking and other automated activities can boost your energy levels and help you to concentrate on the meeting. But if you’re trying to focus on two things that require cognitive attention simultaneously, you can’t hear if something important is happening in the meeting. Alternatively, you have to constantly switch between tasks. It’s really taxing for the brain,” the researchers conclude.
