For three years, everybody had to stay at home and attend classes or work meetings from the comforts of their own room, which had its perks. But, as many have reported, doing meetings or classes over videoconferencing platforms like Zoom, Teams, Skype, or Webex, gets really tiring after a while, and that’s why many simply do other things while the meeting is ongoing, unless you have to speak.
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Although most of that is anecdotal, a new study has now provided supporting evidence that shows how our brain and our heart experiences fatigue when having an online meeting as opposed to attending the same in person.
The study was conducted by a team of researchers from the Graz University of Technology in Austria. They had 35 students attend an engineering lecture, and divided them into two groups, ones who attended online, and those who attended in person. After a week, they had the students switch and attend another lecture.
To measure the level of fatigue, the researchers monitored the students’ brain and heart activity through EEG and ECG, respectively. Through these, they observed reduced alertness, a change in heart rhythm, and a change in mood for the participants attending online.
This doesn’t mean that we have to do away with videoconferencing tools altogether, but it just goes to show that these tools can complement in-person meetings or lectures, but they can’t be replacements for face-to-face interaction.
(Image credit: Chris Montgomery/Unsplash)
Source: neatorama