Video calls are weakening your mindset - what to do about it

‘Please keep your camera on’ was the Covid-19 equivalent of this year’s ‘be back in the office’.  Regardless of how hybrid policies pan out, the reliance on video meetings will inevitably grow in the coming years. It’s only now that we’re starting to understand the consequences of being so intensely face-to-face with people on screen for hours a day. Undoubtedly, Zoom and then Teams saved our bacon in the chaos and uncertainty during the pandemic. Organisations could knit together disparate groups instantly to solve problems and find ingenious ways through the world’s worst health crisis.  However, there were costs, too and ‘Zoom fatigue’ is now playing out into the cumulative effects of burn-out and other stress-related consequences.   There are also new implications coming to light that are perhaps less obvious. For example, in a study, people coming to cosmetic surgeons cited the need to look better on video calls as their prime motivator.

Emily Hemendinger, a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado, suggests that the action of mirror gazing can trigger a range of negative reactions, from reduced confidence to body disorders that some call Zoom Dysmorphia. Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab has been looking at the effects of prolonged video calling. They draw attention to the fact that the amount of eye contact we engage in on video chats and the size of faces on screens is unnatural and affects our brains in unforeseen ways.

In an in-person meeting, people constantly shift their gaze between the speaker, taking notes or looking elsewhere. But on video calls, everyone is looking at everyone all the time. This means a listener is treated non-verbally like a speaker, so even if you don’t speak once in a meeting, you are still looking at faces staring at you, which is like being on stage. The amount of eye contact is, therefore, dramatically increased, which means our brains are consuming more energy to process the constant input stream. 

Another source of stress is that depending on your monitor size and whether you’re using an external monitor, faces on videoconferencing calls can appear too large for comfort. In general, for most setups, if it’s a one-on-one conversation when you’re with co-workers or even strangers on video, you see their face at a size which simulates a personal space that you normally experience when you’re with somebody intimately or about to fight! When someone’s face is that close to ours in real life, our brains interpret it as an intense situation - what’s happening, in effect, when you’re on video calls for many hours with outsized faces, is you’re in a hyper-aroused state.

What can we do about it?

Minimize faces - Stanford’s researchers suggest that, until the platforms change their interface, you take a video call out of the full-screen option to minimize face size and use an external keyboard to increase the personal space between yourself and the screen.

Put down the mirror - Most video platforms show a square of what you look like on camera during a chat. But that’s unnatural. It’s like having a mirror constantly being held up to you. Psychological studies show that you become more self-critical when you’re making decisions and can see your reflection simultaneously. Again, over time, this becomes draining. So, try to hide the self-view, which you can normally access by right-clicking your photo.

Move - We’ve taken for granted that normal meetings and phone calls allow us to walk around and move. However, with videoconferencing, most cameras have a set field of view, meaning a person has to stay in the same spot, limiting our movement. Growing research says that when people are moving, they perform better cognitively; for example, we’re more creative when we’re in a walking meeting. So, why don’t you think about having more calls where people can stand and talk, switching off their cameras for periods to encourage movement?

In a hyper-image-based world, where we’re constantly seeing video and photographic reflections of ourselves, we need to recognise that this can produce a highly distorted self-image, where we’re constantly trying to avoid unflattering images of ourselves, particularly being shared for the world to see and judge. The relevance of this to work is not only well-being but performance. When we spend more time looking at ourselves, we tend to become more dissatisfied with our appearance, creating negative feelings that increase meeting fatigue. Imagine being in an in-person meeting with a looking mirror in front of you. How might that influence your energy?

To embrace all the benefits of hybrid working, leaders must also actively reduce the costs, and one way is to encourage a few more ‘camera-off ‘meetings and a lot more virtual walking meetings to lessen the effects of a mirror being held up to ourselves four or more hours a day.