Zoomed out? How to make video meetings feel less tiring

Whether it's a social catch-up with colleagues, or assembling to set new year objectives, many of us will be reconnecting via Zoom, Teams or Google Meet come Monday morning.

- Linda Geddes

Yet while such platforms have revolutionised flexible and remote working in recent years, scientists are increasingly waking up to the negative toll they can take on people's energy levels and self-esteem. So how can we forge a healthier relationship with videoconferencing in 2025?

Relatively early on in the Covid pandemic, psychologists coined the phrase "Zoom fatigue" to describe the physical and psychological exhaustion that can come from spending extended periods on videoconferencing platforms, and found that people who have more and longer such meetings, or have more negative attitudes towards them, tend to feel more exhausted by them.

Further studies have linked use of the self-view function, which allows you to control whether your face is displayed on your screen during a meeting, to greater levels of fatigue. "We also found a gender effect, with women reporting more Zoom fatigue than men," says Dr Anna Carolina Queiroz, an associate professor of interactive media at the University of Miami, who has been involved in these studies.