22 votes

Stanford study into “Zoom Fatigue” explains why video chats are so tiring

3 comments

  1. [3]
    petrichor
    Link
    This article pretty much hits the nail on the head. I would add another point - the more difficult series of steps needed to start talking in a conversation. You need to identify a lull in the...

    This article pretty much hits the nail on the head.

    I would add another point - the more difficult series of steps needed to start talking in a conversation. You need to identify a lull in the conversation (made more difficult with Zoom's perpetual latency), unmute, say your piece, and mute again. I find Discord, a similar platform with better latency and much better background-noise cancelling, much easier to talk on.

    11 votes
    1. [2]
      Good_Apollo
      Link Parent
      Yeah unfortunately Zoom’s popularity isn’t due to its powerful competence. It’s popular because it just works, and works well enough even for the tech illiterate.

      Yeah unfortunately Zoom’s popularity isn’t due to its powerful competence. It’s popular because it just works, and works well enough even for the tech illiterate.

      3 votes
      1. stu2b50
        Link Parent
        Eh, Zoom does do some things well. For instance, Zoom does a good job at processing all the incoming video streams and providing compressed, lower quality streams to lower end connections and...

        Eh, Zoom does do some things well. For instance, Zoom does a good job at processing all the incoming video streams and providing compressed, lower quality streams to lower end connections and devices.

        Discord video call AFAIK just uses WebRTC, and especially if some people on the call have good webcams (or, rather, webcams with a high resolution), oh boy can it cripple weaker devices, and on poor-er internets you'll constantly be cutting out.

        Zoom can run, albeit poorly, on chromebooks; the web version of discord would likely cause them to immediately self-combust on a video call given my experience with it.

        6 votes