How Does Zoom Affect Your Brain? Neuroscience Now Has Answers Researchers have peered into the brains of people on video calls. The picture that’s emerged isn’t pretty. By Jessica Stillman, Inc.Com- Feb, 2024
Academics, bosses, and workers might continue to tussle about exactly how much time employees should spend in the office. But however these back-to-office debates shake out, one after-effect of the pandemic seems etched in stone: Whatever our setups, we’re all going to keep spending a lot of time on Zoom.
What are all these remote video meetings doing to our brains? Claims of Zoom fatigue started soon after the pandemic hit, so anecdotal evidence that video meetings aren’t great for your brain has been piling up for years. But science has now had time to catch up with watercooler complaints.
A series of neuroscience studies have recently come out painting a more scientific picture of how Zoom and similar tools affect our brains. It’s not pretty.
Less connected
The most recent was a much-chattered-about brain imagining study out of Yale University, published in the journal Imaging Neuroscience. The sophisticated but small study used advanced tech to observe the brain activity of study subjects, some of whom were chatting in person and some of whom were talking over video. Their brains did not look alike.
“In this study we find that the social systems of the human brain are more active during real live in-person encounters than on Zoom,” said study author neuroscientist Joy Hirsch. “Zoom appears to be an impoverished social communication system relative to in-person conditions.”
Or, put even more bluntly, it’s significantly harder to fully connect with someone and stay engaged over Zoom than when you’re physically together. Our brains just don’t respond to faces on screens the same way they do to faces that are in front of us.
More stressed
Video calls may be inherently less exciting for our brains, but that’s not the only issue with this technology that neuroscience has uncovered. Another issue is how many people actually use them in real life.
One particular complaint during the pandemic was the stress and addled feeling produced by back-to-back Zoom calls. To dig into the science of what goes on in your brain when you’re logging onto meetings one after another, Microsoft’s Human Factors Lab had volunteers engage in video meetings — presumably using Teams — while wearing equipment that monitors electrical activity in the brain. Some got a 10-minute break between calls. Some didn’t.
The basic conclusion? Back-to-back meetings allow more and more stress to build up in your brain.
“In two straight hours of back-to-back meetings, the average activity of beta waves–those associated with stress–increased over time. In other words, the stress kept accumulating,” explained Microsoft. When participants got a break, “beta activity dropped, allowing for a ‘reset.’ This reset meant participants started their next meeting in a more relaxed state. It also meant the average level of beta waves held steady through four meetings, with no buildup of stress.”
More self-conscious
This buildup of stress in the brain due to back-to-back calls is relatively simple to work around in real life: just schedule some breaks. But one last effect of Zoom on the brain may be harder to avoid.
Zoom fatigue is clearly a real, physical thing. Is it equally experienced by everyone? Scientists have examined this question too, and the answer is no. Zoom fatigue, Stanford researchers have found, tends to be worse for some folks than others.
Nearly 14 percent of women, compared with just 5.5 percent of men, reported they felt “very” to “extremely” fatigued after Zoom calls. Younger workers and people of color were more likely to experience Zoom fatigue as well.
What do these groups have in common? As relative professional outsiders, on average they are more likely to be worried about how they’re perceived at the office. This leads to more self-focused attention, or in everyday language, more fretting about how you look and sound.
Constantly monitoring yourself in this way seems to be what leads to their greater fatigue. Psychiatrists and plastic surgeons also think people staring at themselves on screen all day may be behind a spike in patients struggling with insecurity around their appearance. They’ve termed what they’re seeing in their practices the Zoom effect.
The Stanford researchers suggest turning off your camera if you feel particularly drained by Zoom, but as we all know, office politics and one-on-one formats can often make that hard to accomplish in real life.
Yes, video calls can be more convenient than going into the office, and they definitely saved our bacon during the pandemic. But our brains evolved for in-person interaction, not rows of little faces in boxes. Neuroscience is increasingly clear that too much Zoom has significant, negative effects on our brains. Plan your work days accordingly.
Click here for the link to this interesting article from Inc.Com
