Video Calls, Self-Consciousness, and Mental Fatigue

One of the most evident beneficiaries of the rush to work from home in the COVID era is video call services. With the advent of fast internet connections, people now matter-of-factly speak to each other over Zoom, Teams, or Skype video calls, for both the purpose of work meetings with colleagues and clients or casual meetups with friends and family members. Some people relish the ability to talk from the comfort of their living rooms, clad in pajama bottoms, to whoever they need to speak to with the push of a button. Some have come to consider video calls to be at the forefront of the vaulted goal of digital transformation of the workplace.

While video calls bring the convenience of being able to talk to whomever wherever, their frequent use also brings plenty of anxiety to their participants. Unlike face-to-face conversations, video calls involve much more time spent looking at the faces of other people. After all, when speaking face to face, people do not constantly stare at the faces of others to whom they are speaking. Especially in the East Asian culture, in which it is not normal to look consistently in the eyes of the other person when speaking, having to talk to people on video calls has brought out an unprecedented need to see others' faces.

That awareness of spending greater length looking at other people's faces has increased self-consciousness about looks as well. After all, if one spends the whole time on a video call looking at other people's faces, it can be rationally assumed that others are staring at one's own face during the whole call as well. That feeling that one is being consistently looked at for an hour or more has placed an implicit pressure on each person in the call to look his or her best throughout the call. Considering that people on video calls are often in their homes, wearing pajama bottoms, and did their bare minimum to prepare the looks for the call beforehand, that is quite a bit of pressure.

And that pressure has the possibility to affect performance while on the call. Work-related video calls are no doubt about something important, concerning client presentations, internal project consultations, and just developing relationships with internal or external stakeholders. As in real life, these call for the full attention of the attendees. But while the tense environment of a real-life meeting room may get attendees into a natural state of concentration, the living room is not automatically made for such, especially when people, in the back of their mind, are consistently reminded that others are staring at their faces.

Some people may resort to staring at their own faces to make sure they look passable, distracting them from the important content of the meetings. In work meetings, instead of looking at others or the materials being shared, they visually make sure that they look professional, presentable, and look the right way to match the occasions of seriousness and concentration. In private meetings, they may constantly adjust their physical state, exaggerating their display of happiness and agreement with others, to outwardly suggest their enjoyment of the entertainment that the calls are supposed to be.

Such multitasking, participating in the call while making sure of continuous presentability, is no doubt tiring. And as terms like "Zoom fatigue" go mainstream, the pushbacks against the increased usage of video calls as a default method for people to get in touch remotely should be reevaluated and reconsidered, with the possibility of the associated mental pressure of the calls fully in mind. Because meetings are now so easy to set remotely, people try to "jump on calls" casually to resolve issues that can be done via emails or just independently. And because people are convinced of visual cues being better in conversations, the calls they jump on tend to be video-based. 

Alternatives to these frequent video calls should be considered because people's mental health can be damaged by the constant pressure of being stared at. Instant messages and emails are just as good, if not better, when conveying instructions and tasks. Written words express meanings more definitely, with fewer chances for misunderstandings and forgettings. They also leave something that can be easily referred back to in the future, unless cumbersome video recordings cannot be easily searched through for relevant content.

Perhaps, to take a step back on, people need to think about the need to communicate at all. It is often surprising that how often people, not just introverts, want to be left alone and do things on their own, both for work and private hobbies. COVID should be a valuable opportunity for people to spend more time exploring their independence from human networks and what they can do on their own. The obsession with video calls only temper with such a valuable opportunity, to the detriment of people reducing their reliance on others who they cannot reach physically quickly anyways.