Zoom fatigue greater for women, study finds
NEW YORK: As video calls are taking over people's work and personal lives amid the pandemic, new Stanford University research has found the feeling of exhaustion that comes from a day of back-to-back online meetings, also known as "Zoom fatigue", is greater for women than men.
Researchers found that overall, one in seven women compared with one in 20 men reported feeling "very" to "extremely" fatigued after Zoom calls.
What contributed most to the feeling of exhaustion among women was an increase in what social psychologists describe as "self-focused attention" triggered by the self-view in video conferencing, according to the study released on the Social Science Research Network.
"Self-focused attention refers to a heightened awareness of how one comes across or how one appears in a conversation," said co-author of the study Jeffrey Hancock, professor of communication in the School of Humanities and Sciences.
The researchers found that while women had the same number of meetings a day as men, their meetings tended to run for longer, and women were less likely to take breaks between meetings.
The findings build on a paper the Stanford researchers recently published in the journal Technology, Mind and Behavior that explored why people might feel exhausted following video conference calls.
For their follow-up study, the researchers surveyed 10 322 participants in February and March using their "Zoom Exhaustion and Fatigue Scale" to better understand individual differences in burn-out from the extended use of video conferencing during the past year. “We we have quantitative data that Zoom fatigue is worse for women, and more importantly, we know why," Hancock said.
Prolonged self-focus could produce what the researchers called "mirror anxiety", Hancock said. A way to avoid this was to turn off self-view. Also contributing to an increase in Zoom fatigue among women were feelings of being physically trapped by the need to stay centred in the camera's field of view, said the study. To address this, people could move further from the screen or turn off the video during parts of calls.