Three of four say they like teleconferencing

Seen in survey as ‘excellent’ tool of communication

OTTAWA • In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly three out of four Canadians say virtual conferencing tools are an “excellent” alternative to interacting with people in person.

From the sound of it, in-person meetings and events may still be a long way off for many Canadians.

According to a survey produced by Leger Opinion (LEO) for the Association for Canadian Studies (ASC), 72 per cent of Canadians agreed with the statement that videoconferencing is an excellent alternative to interacting with people.

Asked how they feel about the experience of videoconferencing, a staggering 84 per cent of Canadian — including 94 per cent of Quebecers — responded “positive.”

Those numbers are surprising to ASC president Jack Jedwab in a time when the phenomenon of “Zoom fatigue” — the impression of feeling overly drained after a period of meeting over a videoconferencing tool such as Zoom — is increasingly documented.

“I didn’t expect that at all actually. Because, anecdotally, you hear from a lot of people saying they miss interactions with people or miss seeing people to the extent they did before the pandemic. But I think we’ve become accustomed to this idea of communication through videoconferencing,” Jedwab said in an interview.

“I don’t feel like I’m seeing Zoom fatigue in this data,” he said. “I think we’re going to see this large group, that has become accustomed to using headsets along with videoconferencing, maintain the habit.”

The survey, which polled 1,517 adult Canadians randomly recruited from LEO’s online panel between July 24 and 26, aimed to see how much Canadians are using videoconferencing tools like Zoom or Skype during the pandemic, as well as their feelings about the experience.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic early this year, most governments around the world exhorted their citizens to self-isolate at home as much as possible and avoid any unnecessary contact with others.

Since then, the use of videoconferencing platforms has exploded. Zoom saw its daily number of meeting participants jump from 10 million in December 2019 to 300 million in April. A competing platform, Microsoft Teams, recorded a 70 per cent rise in daily active users between March and April.

Nearly half (49 per cent) of Canadians said they used videoconferencing tools more than they used to before the pandemic, whereas only 16 per cent said they used them just as often or less.

Another 34 per cent declared they don’t use videoconferencing platforms at all, but Jedwab says age is a significant factor in determining if one’s use of the tools increased or not during the pandemic.

For example, 70 per cent of Zoomers — a nickname given to people born in the late 1990s and that was until now unrelated to the platform Zoom — reported an increased use of tools like Teams since the beginning of the pandemic.

“The baby Zoomers are using these platforms to a much more greater extent than the baby boomers,” who were by far the most likely to never use videoconferencing tools, Jedwab explained. “We’re actually creating a generation who will grow up interacting on Zoom.”

Age, but also concern about catching COVID-19, is also a significant factor when it comes to the reason for using a platform like Zoom, as well as the time spent videoconferencing in a day.

Postmedia News