pandemic

By Péter Bajomi-Lázár, Budapest Business School. During the COVID-19 Pandemic, many of us have experienced the booming of video conference calls on Zoom, Skype, and a number of other digital platforms. Unlike during the Spanish flu a hundred years ago, technology has this time helped many to keep their jobs. But ‘Zooming’ has a variety of negative effects as well – warn us now the experts of the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab. The reasons why the excessive use of video platforms may cause the so-called ‘Zoom fatigue’ include too intense close eye contact (which causes social anxiety), seeing yourself permanently, as if in a mirror (which may turn you too critical of yourself), the limitation of our movements (being forced to stay put for endless hours), and exaggerated verbal and non-verbal communication (basically meaning that you cannot rely on your usual body language, and need to make up for it either verbally or using exaggerated mimes and gestures). To these, one can add a few more. I was born in the late 1960s and have recently hit…