“This is not simply you turning off the camera to take a break from having to be nonverbally active, but also turning your body away from the screen,” Bailenson emphasizes, “so that for a few minutes you are not smothered with gestures that are perceptually realistic but socially meaningless.”
Even before the skyrocketing use caused by the pandemic, Bailenson says that “videoconferencing is here to stay.” But it’s a good idea to change it up more often with email, in-person conferences, or voice calls. “Perhaps a driver of Zoom fatigue is simply that we are taking more meetings than we would be doing face-to-face,” he adds.
