A research team at Stanford has been exploring how different people are affected by multiple video calls, specifically in terms of fatigue or burnout. After a year of conducting our lives remotely, everyone is feeling a little bit of “Zoom fatigue,” but the researchers
found that certain demographics are likely to be feeling it more than others.
The team surveyed more than 10,000 people in February and March about their video call fatigue. About 14 percent of women (one in seven) said they felt “very” to “extremely” fatigued after video calls, while only about 5.5 percent of men (one in 20) reported the same feelings.
According to the research, one of the main reasons for this is thought to be “self-focused attention,” caused by the ability to see how you look on camera. The team also found that womens’ meetings tend to run longer, although both men and women report having about the same number of meetings per day. They also found that women are less likely to take breaks between meetings, which also contributes.
The study also looked at levels of fatigue between other demographics, such as age and race. The researchers found that younger people tended to report burnout more often than older people, and that participants of color reported higher levels of fatigue than white participants.
