‘Zoom anxiety’ infects the nation during the pandemic
Most of the population has experienced ‘Zoom anxiety’ since March, when working moved online and Zoom became a widely used tool to connect colleagues and friends.
Home workers worried about everything from their looks and their Zoom background to having a technical problem and being unable to fix them.
Following an 80% increase Google searches for ‘Zoom anxiety’ since March, nearly three-quarters (73%) of home workers have experienced feeling nervous and worried when put onto a video call in the last year.
For more than eight in 10 people (83%) the biggest trigger of Zoom anxiety was having tech problems on a video call and not knowing how to fix them.
More than two-thirds (67%) of home workers worried about being unable to read a caller’s body language, and just over half (56%) were anxious about feeling unheard. Around a third (34%) feared having an unprofessional background.
Comparatively just less than one in 10 (9%) worried about what to do with their hands, and 18 per cent fretted over how they looked on camera.
Most people (76%) found Zoom calls more daunting than telephone calls, and around half (48%) found them worse than face to face meetings.
James Robinson, marketing manager at Buffalo 7, which carried out the research, said: “Of course, 2020 hasn’t been short on anxiety, and we’ve all had a lot to deal with. However, with a huge 73% of respondents saying they’ve struggled with Zoom anxiety at some point this year, it’s clear that for many video calls bring with them their own set of challenges.”