Is it time to say goodbye to Zoom fatigue?
Virtual meetings became the new normal in work settings a few years ago. Now they’re seemingly a daily part of life at the office. In 2024, we covered what science had to say about making virtual meetings much less tiring as the world started to come back from COVID-19. But is videoconference fatigue, or Zoom fatigue, still an issue? A study carried out by Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany explored whether online meetings are more draining than physical ones. The findings were published in the ‘Journal of Occupational Health Psychology’(opens in new window).
Revisiting Zoom fatigue
The research team recruited 125 participants to examine how exhausting online meetings were compared to other types of meetings. Over a 10-day period, the subjects reported whether they had participated in a meeting, whether that meeting was virtual or face-to-face, and whether they were handling other things during the meeting. In addition, the volunteers were asked if they took a break or stretched their legs, and how exhausted they were after the meeting. The researchers gathered data on 945 meetings, of which 62 % were video meetings. “Our initial hypothesis was that zoom fatigue still existed. After all, all previous studies had come to this conclusion, so there was no reason to doubt that this result was correct,” commented author Hadar Nesher Shoshan, junior professor at JGU’s Institute of Psychology, in a press release(opens in new window). “However, we found no evidence of the phenomenon! According to our findings, online meetings are not more fatiguing than in-person meetings.” Overall, the results showed that video meetings under 44 minutes were less exhausting than other meetings. Boring video meetings were seen as even more exhausting.
Has the meaning of video meetings changed?
Zoom fatigue has been supported by several studies during COVID-19 and after. In fact, it’s widely believed that the phenomenon still exists. What if virtual meetings aren’t really that tiring after all? And what if people have gotten used to video meetings, resulting in “no-Zoom fatigue”? Nesher Shoshan explained: “It is more likely that the cause of zoom fatigue was the pandemic situation itself rather than the online meeting conditions. Projected onto zoom meetings, linked as they were closely with lockdown, were all the negative aspects associated with the circumstances. People were missing their old way of life, their social contacts and were no longer enjoying their work. Our results highlight the importance in the social sciences of replicating research findings in the appropriate historical setting.” Portraying video meetings as fatiguing might have major practical implications, particularly for return-to-work mandates and hybrid working policies. “We have been able, at least to some extent, to undermine the argument that online meetings while working from home can still cause burn-out among personnel even though the pandemic is over,” Nesher Shoshan concluded.