Tired of video chatting? The experts weigh in on 'Zoom fatigue' amid coronavirus pandemic

At some point over the last month, there’s a good chance you’ve done some video chatting, whether it be via Zoom, Google Hangouts, or something else along those lines. After all, these days it’s how we socialize, it’s how we work, and for some — it’s getting to be a little much. So much so, there’s even a term for it, called “Zoom fatigue.”

“It’s the fatigue, the tiredness, the anxiety that surrounds having so many zoom calls in our current lifestyle,” Johns Hopkins University Clinical Psychologist Dr. Neda Gould said Monday via (of course) a Zoom call.

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Gould added that one reason Zoom fatigue can happen is there are a lot of different things going on while video chatting. For instance, there’s the person you’re talking to, what they’re saying, whether you can hear them, whether you can pick up on their social cues virtually, and don’t forget, you can see yourself on video the whole time too.

“Essentially we’re multitasking even though we’re doing one thing,” Gould explained.

So what can we do about it? Gould recommended getting some fresh air in between meetings, spacing out your calls, and she also said to remember it is ok to just say no.

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Of course, that brings up a different issue: how to tell people you don’t want to chat when they know you’re not busy. For that, University of Maryland Sociologist R. Gordon Rinderknecht offered a simple solution.

“It’s probably pretty safe to just be honest with them,” he said. “Because they’re probably exhausted by all of this too.”