Does Zoom exhaust you?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, as social distancing has kept people apart physically, more people are logging on to popular video chat platforms to connect with colleagues, family and friends. And as a result, virtual meetings, or “zooming”, have skyrocketed. However, communication professor Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL) examined the psychological consequences of spending hours per day on these platforms, warning that those video calls are likely tiring you out.

In a normal meeting, people will variously be looking at the speaker, taking notes, or looking elsewhere. But on Zoom calls, everyone is looking at everyone, all the time. A listener is treated nonverbally like a speaker, so even if you don’t speak once in a meeting, you are still looking at faces staring at you. The amount of eye contact is dramatically increased. “Social anxiety of public speaking is one of the biggest fears that exist in our population,” Bailenson said. “When you’re standing up there and everybody’s staring at you, that’s a stressful experience.”

Most video platforms show a square of what you look like on camera during a chat, which is unnatural. Bailenson said, “In the real world, if somebody was following you around with a mirror constantly so that you were seeing yourself in a mirror while you were talking to people, making decisions, giving feedback, etc., that would just be crazy.” He cited studies showing that when you see a reflection of yourself, you are more critical of yourself and there will be negative emotional consequences.

Moreover, video chats dramatically reduce our usual mobility. In-person and audio phone conversations allow humans to walk around and move. But with videoconferencing, most cameras have a set field of view, meaning a person has to generally stay in the same spot. Movement is limited in ways that are not natural. “There’s a growing research now that says when people are moving, they’re performing better cognitively,” Bailenson said.

On the subway in Beijing, most people stare at their smart phones. Some play video games or watch TV dramas, while some choose to read.

Online novels are popular among these readers. In fact, more people are becoming registered users on online literature websites or smart phone applications. The total number of online literature website users had increased to over 500 million by the end of November 2018, according to a report from China Internet Network Information Center. This shows half of all netizens are online literature readers.

Many scholars estimate the number will keep increasing at an annual rate of tens of millions. Yet the fast growth due to the widespread adoption of the Internet and smart phones in the past 20 years was criticized by some writers as disorder. As the number of online literature works increases, some vulgar （低俗的）online novels have appeared. Ning Ken, the top prize winner of the First Online Literature Contest, said online literature needs guidance. "I think it should be something of high quality, rather than just a sort of entertainment. Its quality should be improved," said the writer.

What’s interactive learning? Online classes are examples of extreme interactive learning but almost any time a computer enters the academic space the resulting lessons can be said to be interactive. When modern academics talk about interactivity in the classroom, they are almost always talking about technology and usually mean the Internet. So we can say interactive learning is a sort of academic plan. Computer technology must be applied to the plan. And its aim is to stress or teach specific material.

Ever since computers have played a big role in the world, educators have been trying to combine technology into the classroom. Interactive learning depends on computer use but it’s usually far more than simple computer education like learning to type and to locate resources online. Most of the time, interactivity is about the combination of computers into regular lessons. Educational games are a good example. Students who play games about education can strengthen their classroom learning. Many educators believe that students are able to learn better by varying the ways in which information is delivered.

One of the biggest arguments of educators in favor of interactive learning is that most of today’s students are already so familiar with the Internet that introducing computer-based learning is often extremely effective at catching and holding their attention. More young people than ever before turn to computer technology for help in many areas. Many educators say that applying the already-familiar technology to classrooms can help students become more active in the learning.

Interactive learning is generally seen as the opposite of passive learning, which depends on observation. Students typically need a combination of passive and active learning in order to master concepts. If everything is interactive, students run the risk of being over-stimulated or losing track of the main goals. If teaching is entirely passive, however, students may find their interest and focus declining. Teachers need to strike a balance between passive learning techniques like lecturing in new and often unexpected settings designed by the computer technology.