A friend made me aware of these two articles that try to explain reasons for the very special, and peculiar fatigue one can feel after video-conferencing.

A Theory of Zoom Fatigue

With regards to video conferencing specifically, it’s much too tempting to multi-task while we do so. And, as we should all know by now, nobody multi-tasks well. It’s especially exhausting to be continuously dropping a conversational thread and picking it up again. Something as seemingly benign as a notification flashing on the screen, even if we don’t attend to it for more than a split second, can throw us off the thread of thought, and the momentary work of trying to pick it up again takes a mental toll.

…a case of ordinarily unconscious processes operating at max capacity to help us make sense of what we’re experiencing.

L. M. Sacasas

Three Reasons You Might Be Exhausted Right Now

For more information on the perceptual burden you might be experiencing, look first at the process of “unconscious inference” known as perception itself. As we take in sensory information, through the process of sensation, our brain has to work with that input to produce something for us to understand and to which we then respond, through the process of perception. Reading 25 rooms while ignoring the sensory input from the very room you are in, makes this entire meaning-making process inherently more complex and likely burdensome. This is a traditional, bottom-up explanation of perception. 

Erika Sanborne