New study reveals fat zoom is real –– Here ‘s how to beat it

If you feel tired after hours at the end of video calls, you are not alone. A recent study by Stanford found that ‘Zoom fat’ is actually fat. To support their case, the researchers state the four main causes of the recent phenomenon, along with a few simple solutions to help combat it.

A year into the pandemic, we’ve all sat through more Zoom calls than we ever thought possible. Whether you’ve been working from home for months, or filling up evenings and weekends catching up with lovers from afar, it’s no secret that our screen time is over. the last twelve months of engagement. And if you’ve ever caught yourself feeling extra drained –– in mind and body –– the new study shows that this feeling of fatigue is linked to so many video calls.

Encouraged by the recent rise in video conferencing, communications professor Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL), studied the psychological effects of spending hours daily on these platforms. His decisions downplayed four main causes of fatigue:

  1. Too much close eye contact is very intense.
  2. Always seeing yourself in video chats in real time becomes deadly.
  3. Video chat greatly reduces our mobility.
  4. The mental load is much higher in video chat.

To help cure Zoom obesity, the report also includes simple solutions that can help individuals ’well-being. These include hacks such as the use of the “hide self view” option on Zoom; using an external video camera that is further away from your screen; and allowing yourself to “hear only”, ie: not only turn off your camera to take a break from the need to be inactive, but also turn your body away from the screen.

So the next time you feel a burnout from just looking at yourself on screen all day; get up, take a walk, position yourself further away from your computer, and try to turn your camera on as often –– sometimes an old-fashioned phone call is good.

See also: Less than a third of people reading this headline feel a strong sense of well-being

.Source