‘Zoom fatigue’: Online communication less effective than in person, study suggests

Montreal researchers said they think the links formed during in-person discussion permit people to communicate emotions or offer non-verbal cues.

Communication between people is less effective when it’s done through technology as opposed to in person – and remote video chatting may even require a greater level of concentration, a new study by Montreal researchers suggests.

The study’s results, its authors say, could help explain “Zoom fatigue” – the discomfort that many felt during the COVID-19 pandemic after spending entire days participating in online meetings.

“Our findings clearly demonstrate the price we pay for technology,” the authors say in the study, called “Technologically-assisted communication attenuates inter-brain synchrony,” published in the December 2022 issue of the open-access journal NeuroImage.

Guillaume Dumas, a researcher with Universite de Montreal and the Sainte-Justine children’s hospital, along with colleagues, used an electroencephalogram _ a test that measures electrical activity in the brain _ to examine the brains of mothers and their children. Sixty-two mother-child pairs were studied; their brain activity was measured when they were talking in person and through a remote video chat.

The researchers found that participants’ brains “synchronized” when they were in each other’s presence but did not do so when they were chatting through a screen. Researchers said they were able to observe nine important “cross-brain links” between participants during in-person conversation, compared to only one link during the virtual chat.

They said they think the links formed during in-person discussion permit people to communicate emotions or offer non-verbal cues.

“It’s the adage about being on the same wavelength,” Dumas said, adding that it’s clear from the study that certain cross-brain links are absent when people talk through video conferencing software.

“We pay a bit of a price by using technology to communicate by having lower-quality and less authentic communication, compared to what our brain is used to (and) what it was made for.”