Why Teleconferencing is Exhausting Science has established that there are psychological consequences to hours of video chatting. The Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab found four primary reasons why video chats fatigue humans: Close-up eye contact Hours in the mirror Lack of mobility High cognitive load People move around over There’s no conference People looking at Everyone on video has to the course of an in-person table or other separation; themselves constantly work harder to try to meeting; video chat forces staring at other people so in real time during video understand and interpret them to sit in one place. closely is highly intense. chats tires them out. non-verbal cues. Source: Nonverbal overload: A theoretical argument for the causes of Zoom fatigue “ We have lost many of the social cues we unconsciously rely on [with teleconferencing]—which might be why it feels intuitively challenging or somehow less satisfying as a way of connecting with another human. Source: UX Collective “