Your Brain Hates Zoom, Too.
Dominic Matos
Illustrations by Iona Duncan
Is there any greater act of pleasure than pressing that big red “Leave meeting” button that’s been calling your name since the Zoom call began? Why do virtual meetings always seem to warrant such an exasperated sigh afterward? We all know that feeling of post-Zoom exhaustion, when you find yourself much more fatigued than seems reasonable for such a passive activity. Now entering the third year of the pandemic, symptoms of excessive Zoom use are being reported across the country, such as unusual fatigue, disconnection from one’s body, and appearance insecurities [1]. Even though Zoom has been crucial in maintaining education, work, and all kinds of communication throughout the pandemic, constant virtual meetings seem to have seriously messed with our minds. While virtual meetings themselves seem harmless, once they are turned into an everyday activity, the loss of authentic human interaction presents a host of potentially damaging effects on the brain. Excessive virtual interactions interfere with our nonverbal communication, the brain’s reward systems, attention capabilities, self-perception, and important threat instincts. These effects follow us into the real world, and may remain long after the pandemic has ended. Because Zoom was only recently employed on such a wide scale, we are still learning about the precise nature of these effects; doing so will be key to understanding our behaviors and stabilizing our moods in the age of virtual communication.
Communication Takes More Than Just Words
To understand why too much Zoom can harm us, we first have to understand the essential components of in-person human interactions and how they coincide with thinking, processing, and awareness. It may seem like our conversations happen solely through our words, but in-person interactions involve much more than merely verbal communication. Nonverbal communication (NVC) is just as important as verbal communication (VC) in exchanging information; facial expressions, body language, proximities, and eye contact are all important elements of an effective conversation [2]. NVC and VC occur simultaneously, but NVC is often more revealing of one’s true motives, thoughts, or feelings, as it is less consciously controlled. It’s easier to verbally tell a lie than it is to stop fidgeting or avoiding eye contact [3].
In fact, eye contact is a critical component of NVC due to how effectively it grabs our attention. As innately social creatures, we have evolved to use our eyes as social tools [4]. Making eye contact directs our attention toward a possible social interaction and alerts our brain of a potential reward, whether it’s a knowing look with your best friend across a crowded room or an accidental glance with a passing stranger. Eye contact positively influences our judgment of the likeability of others, our memory of their faces, and allows for gaze-following — the ability to tell where or how far someone is looking just from seeing their eyes. Gaze-following facilitates joint attention, another form of NVC which refers to instances where you and those around you pay attention to something together; joint attention is integral in your ability to feel engaged with the people around you [4]. However, none of these social-interaction elements translate to Zoom. The screen barrier in virtual meetings severs the participants from the many benefits and intimacies of human connection; there is no opportunity to engage in the physicality necessary for authentic exchanges. Additionally, audio delay is a major contributor to Zoom meetings being draining and feeling unnatural. Even in-person interactions have pauses between sentences, but past a certain point these pauses last too long and begin to negatively affect the participants’ perception of the conversation as a whole [5]. It’s not fun to have to wait for your words to travel through the internet after every sentence. This lack of nonverbal communication is multiplied by every participant staring blankly at you through the screen.
In a Zoom call, you’re presented with multiple faces all at once. It’s like standing at the front of a room with a close-up audience diligently watching your every move. In real life, this situation might at least be bearable, since the crowd might end up speaking or shuffling or leaving. But on Zoom, those silent observers in the audience don’t look away or leave — they’re just there. Consequently, you must dedicate a portion of your attention to each of them at all times. The mental strain of having to monitor everyone is amplified by technology issues (imagine if the audience’s faces and voices were delayed and blurry) and the lack of NVC cues. However, the frustration doesn’t just end there. Trying to communicate without the usual arsenal of nonverbal tools can be exhausting — like the strain of reading without your glasses or having a conversation in a language you only partially understand.
Where’s the Fun in Little Face Boxes & Crackly Audio?
With NVC mostly eliminated, Zoom interactions can feel much less rewarding and engaging. Since social interactions are a key component of human existence, our brains are trained to recognize the difference between real-life and virtual social encounters. In-person interactions activate regions of the brain involved in reward, but virtual interactions do not yield the same effect [6]. Dopamine, often referred to as “the reward chemical,” is a neurotransmitter mainly involved in pleasure, reward, motivation, and more. In the brain, differengt neural pathways are activated depending on the type of stimuli available; once activated, these pathways trigger the production and release of neurotransmitters relevant to produce particular feelings, sensations, and emotions [7]. In the case of pleasurable stimuli — like when you hear an amazing song for the first time, or open a textbook immediately to the right page — neurons in certain regions of the brain start producing dopamine. The release of this chemical activates the mesolimbic pathway, as it corresponds to feelings of reward and motivation. We become inclined to repeat actions that result in reward and seek out these positive stimuli again and again [8]. Oxytocin, a neural chemical involved in social bonding, regulates these pathways involved in reward processing, which is why positive social environments and interactions feel so good [9].
The difference between expectation versus reality of the incoming reward determines how much reward it actually produces. Zoom, however, does not provide us with many of the essential aspects of in-person interactions, and as a result, our brains don’t anticipate much reward [6]. Before every behavior, our brain analyzes a task’s potential reward versus the effort required to complete it [10]. We act based on our estimates of how to maximize reward while exerting the minimum effort, and this reward estimate is what helps activate our dopaminergic pathways [10]. Multiple areas of the brain related to reward and reward-processing are activated when positive social feedback is anticipated, but when interactions are mediated thplsrough a screen, it’s exponentially more difficult to predict someone’s thoughts and feelings, so less reward is felt. “Hi, Grandma!” over Zoom isn’t the same as “Hi Grandma!” at the front door. Sure, we’ll feel some reward — it’s still Grandma, after all — but it’s not quite the same. In Zoom meetings, without all the little signals we’re accustomed to through NVC and in the absence of almost any predicted reward, dopaminergic pathways are minimally activated. When you receive less reward than anticipated, it leads to a negative response, and no positive emotions are produced [11]. Since dopaminergic pathway activation is linked to increased alertness, energy, and motivation, talking to someone without the promise of these typical motivators can be incredibly fatiguing. Your brain is on a treadmill chasing a dangling reward that will never come.
There is Such a Thing as Too Boring
The limited reward we experience in virtual interactions also plays a powerful role in our interest in the situation and likelihood to pay attention. Imagine sitting in your least favorite class. As the droning voice of the incredibly dry lecturer drifts in and out of focus, your mind wanders to different places. Maybe you start thinking about an exciting party you’re attending that weekend, or you daydream about approaching the barista you’re in love with. You try your absolute hardest to pay attention, but still, something, anything else seems more interesting. Anyone who has experienced this sensation knows that our attention is a finite resource.
A component of our complex cognitive, motor, sensory and visual functions, attention refers to a person’s ability to pick out and focus on specific, exciting stimuli, and engage with environmental stimuli sources [12]. Our working memory (WM) is an extremely powerful form of memory closely linked with attention; WM operates over periods of seconds, and only holds a limited amount of information. When we focus on an object, person, or idea, the information we know about it enters into our WM. Stimuli around us compete for our attention all day, but as soon as a stimulant gains control of our working memory, it wins, and the information is rapidly analyzed [11]. The brain has limited attention span and WM to distribute across different demands of concentration, and it prefers to use it on the more engaging, potentially rewarding, and exciting tasks rather than the mundane or tedious ones [13]. Engaging tasks, such as those with higher promised reward, novelty, stress, or irregularity, have a higher priority for receiving a share of our attention. The more engaged we are with a task, the more effort we put into our performance [13]. The more boring and routine tasks receive less of a priority for attention, making it unbearably difficult to focus on something boring.
Boring tasks make us crave stimulation and may lead us to resort to multitasking. But multitasking isn’t as productive as it seems. When you multitask, each additional task or context you switch between costs efficiency and accuracy, referred to as the “task switch costs” [14]. It’s this act of switching between mental contexts that requires effort and slows your brain down; generating thoughts within a new context every time you switch tasks is not as neurologically seamless as it might seem [14]. Whether you’re talking to a friend about yesterday’s outing while simultaneously revising a paper, or preparing five different meal orders at once, switching tasks requires alternating between the different worlds of thought you’re considering. Therefore, your performance suffers when you constantly transition from one train of thought to another [15]. True multitasking without any drawbacks doesn't really exist — it’s just not possible. Even worse, Zoom makes it tremendously easier for you to get off task.
Attending a virtual event opens up the opportunity for all kinds of multitasking: your computer is already open, and the vast realm of the internet is just a few clicks away. Unlike sitting through an incredibly boring in-person lecture with few physical distractions, on Zoom you are surrounded by a world of readily accessible — and more interesting — things. It’s probably rare for you to be in a Zoom meeting without your phone either actively in your hand, or right beside you ready to deliver a constant stream of stimulation. During a Zoom meeting, you can comfortably browse your phone, do other work on your computer, and engage in a plethora of other distractions happening around you. Media multitasking, like checking your phone or listening to music while on a Zoom call, is recognized as a separate, and even more taxing form of multitasking. Media multitasking drastically reduces the performance of your working memory and can impair your long-term remembrance of what you’re trying to focus on [16]. Chronic media multitasking can cause these deficits to arise in situations where there aren’t even any distractions [16].
Not only does Zoom have a tendency to result in multitasking, but the content of the actual Zoom call usually isn’t particularly exciting. Anyone who has been in a Zoom call knows the experience usually lacks novelty and irregularity, and the promised reward is usually small. This is not a good recipe for engagement. As a result, the brain doesn’t really “want” to use up valuable attention on Zoom; it would much rather focus on the meme your friend just sent you, or the lyrics and drum rhythm of the song you’re listening to. Both of which are definite winners in the novelty category [17].
If You Feel Like You Look Worse On Zoom, You’re Right.
How often have you logged on to a Zoom call and stared at the tiny, distorted box containing your face? Maybe you tilt your head and adjust your hair, attempting to find the best angle on your laptop’s smudged, low-resolution webcam. In virtual meetings, we engage not just with others, but with our own images as well; our miniature selves enclosed within that Zoom window also demand some of our attention. Constantly looking at this alienating, up-close mirror image of your face on Zoom can warp your self-perception. Zoom Dysmorphia refers to the effects of Zoom’s self-distortions, which are similar to those of Body Dysmorphic Disorder [18]. In brief, Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) is a mental illness involving obsessive focus on perceived imperfections of one’s own appearance, typically to an extent that it gets in the way of everyday life [19]. Mirrors, in general, can be extremely distracting and sometimes even dangerous to those with BDD because of how much time they spend staring at themselves [19]. Unsurprisingly, staring at yourself on Zoom all day can exacerbate these effects for those with BDD, and can also influence these tendencies to arise in people without the disorder.
With the prevalence of online meetings, Zoom Dysmorphia is becoming increasingly common. People are reportedly unable to stop looking at themselves while using Zoom, and hyper-fixate on their flaws, real or not [20]. In general, it’s unnatural for us to see ourselves as frequently as we do nowadays. Even when we would see ourselves in the past, it would only be brief moments in a mirror or a moment captured in a photo. Never before would we constantly see our real-time movements and reactions — giving us all the more to critique ourselves.
Not only does Zoom obligate us to stare at a seemingly relentless mirror, but front-facing cameras distort our faces by default by causing our eyes to appear smaller and our noses bigger [21]. Being able to “touch up” your face on Zoom and modify your facial features, or having the option to choose between a reflected or non-reflected view of yourself makes it easier to distort your self-perception. It is this ability and option to manipulate the appearance of our zoom-self that separates it from the “real” us, and what we look like in person. This raises the question: “Which way do I prefer to look?” It’s a lot to think about during a Zoom meeting, and definitely doesn’t help with mental fatigue.
During the pandemic, there was no doubt a spike in screentime and social media usage, and the increased use of filters, video conferencing, and social media have been identified as causes for worsening self-perception, anxiety, and mental health. Even as we return to in-person activities, these Zoom-related problems can persist [1]. To put this into perspective, dermatologists are seeing a significant rise in cosmetic consultations in the midst of the global pandemic [20]. Eighty-six percent of these patients cited video conferencing as the reason for their visit. In a survey of over 7,000 participants, 70% reported stress or anxiety related to returning to in-person activities, referencing concerns of appearance as a significant source of the anxiety; even further, more than 70% of participants use filters for video conferences and social media with the desire to improve their appearance [21]. And maybe it is just a coincidence, but TikTok gained 85% of its users during the pandemic [22]. Transitioning back to in-person interactions has people searching for ways to change our real-world appearance as we were able to do over Zoom, and maintain our digital persona; this return is where the danger of filters and digital facial effects presents itself. The societal pressure to appear flawless is generally present, but to a much greater extent for women; Zoom Fatigue is usually greater for women as well because of this higher expectation to appear put together and professional [23]. Constantly checking your own Zoom box to make sure you look perfect is yet another thing to add to the Zoom Multitask checklist, and adds another burden to the cognitive load.
Why is Everybody Staring at Me?
Close-proximity interactions like those in Zoom can trigger the same physiological reaction as a physical threat or attack [24, 26]. During Zoom calls, each person’s square consists only of their face, including your own, and they constantly appear to be staring back at you. From an evolutionary standpoint, if there was a very large human face up close and staring at you, your primal instinct would inherently expect to either engage in conflict or flee the situation; neither of these elicit a good response for being in a meeting [25]. The “fight or flight” response pumps the hormone adrenaline into the bloodstream, which jump-starts reactions like increased heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen sent to the brain, alertness, and nutrients in the bloodstream — again, not the most useful for a Zoom meeting [26]. While these reactions won’t happen as intensely in a Zoom call as they would while you’re running from a lion, it’s confusing to our brain if these systems are engaged during a situation that doesn’t seem to warrant them. This reaction could also be induced by our inability to distance ourselves from the faces. In real-life conversations, you can move yourself, readjust your body position, lean away — anything you want to control your personal space and where you are. In Zoom meetings, however, your personal space is defined by how big the participant squares are, and not only are there multiple faces near you, but you can’t do anything to get away from them. The conflict between subconsciously undergoing a stress response and not doing anything besides staring at a screen is probably a contributor to mental strain during zoom.
Am I Even Really Here Right Now?
Zoom not only skews your perception of others, but can also change how you think about yourself. Depersonalization may be an unfamiliar word but a familiar feeling. A complex term to discuss, depersonalization is the persistent feeling of observing yourself from outside your body or having a sense that your surroundings aren't real. It can feel like things are happening around you but there’s something separating you from the outside world, or that you don’t feel connected to the reflection you see in a mirror [27]. High digital and social media consumption can lead to feelings of depersonalization, and too much Zoom use can easily detach one from their body [28]. It’s difficult to resonate with that person you see on your Zoom screen; it’s a broadcast of yourself, but there’s nothing to guarantee or prove that it’s really you. The pandemic drastically reduced how frequently we’re involved in genuine social settings, and with many of our interactions being through a screen and lacking typical conversation novelty, the “not feeling real” aspect of depersonalization can be easily amplified. Everything you see through a screen is just digital imagery: none of the people, objects, animals, or anything else are real, they’re just projections of light; you can’t actually reach out and touch someone’s face through a screen. Spending all day looking at faces composed of pixels in a screen instead of looking at tangible objects or people can make everything feel a little disconnected even if you’re not having a depersonalized episode.
Life in an Artificial World is Unsustainable
You’re not making it up: Zoom does cause ridiculous exhaustion. The way in which Zoom interacts with our brain is somewhat of a chain reaction, as most of its effects act as catalysts for others. Zoom doesn’t allow for most of the components of real-life social interactions, which makes calls less rewarding. This lack of reward makes the experience tiring and exceedingly difficult to pay attention to, ultimately increasing our tendency to multitask, harming memory, productivity, and accuracy. All this occurring simultaneously in our brains is cause for the annoyingly excessive post-Zoom exhaustion, and is all dramatically amplified by the pandemic’s sudden halt of in-person interactions.
This frustrating phenomenon is only one example of how modern technology is rapidly developing and forcing society to learn how to adapt. Social interactions are one of the core components of our lives, and abruptly transitioning our social settings to the virtual world is a change our brains aren’t necessarily prepared for. The pandemic was the first time the world attempted to simulate real life through a technological interface, and we are now beginning to confront the repercussions of doing so. Because of how ingrained technology is in our world, it’s easy to forget that the human brain isn’t wired for these types of social interactions. And, while Zoom has put everyone through countless painfully mundane hours of sitting in front of a screen, there is a silver lining in what it has taught us. Zoom Fatigue has warned us of the repercussions of taking advantage of what we can do with technology. We have to remember that just because we can’t immediately feel the impact, substituting technology for real-life interactions can still affect our brains in harmful ways. So next time you find yourself staring at that red button, why not give it a press?
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