Zoom: How It Changed Our Post-COVID Lives For Better and Worse
Many assumed people would declare a video substitution of human face to face interaction the next best thing or the worst thing. It's an ongoing conversation.
Jane Jetson did little more in her Orbit City days than press buttons, shop at the local mall, dictate orders to her children, Judy and Elroy, inside their space home and tolerate her inexplicably Brooklyn-accented husband, George.
Jane also Zoomed 60 years before it was a thing.
I loved "The Jetsons," the TV cartoon show that debuted in 1962 and I would watch on the color console TV in the basement of our house laying on the floor, head propped up by a large pillow, when I was just four years old. I wanted to be her when I grew up, even though I did not imagine we would be doing exactly what she was doing six decades later.
There are 3.3 trillion Zoom meeting minutes every year.
Like most everyone in my age group, these unreal, robotic, alien, other worldly relationships infiltrated my childhood imagination from the portals of TV and movies like "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Planet of The Apes" with Charles Heston (aka Moses) bare-chested with scraps of fabric draped on his lower torso, both films in theaters in 1968, instilling the notion that virtual and alien friendships could be deadly. But these fabricated small and large screen characters also were key in normalizing how you could witness connections that existed even if one was not standing right in front of you. In the flesh.
You didn't need to be able to see, touch or feel a presence of a person to believe they were real.
Zooming at Work
Now in real life, the pandemic ushered in the necessity to exist virtually within the spaces of work, friends, family and community with Zoom (or Microsoft Teams, FaceTime or Google Meet) becoming the cursed platforms as well as the tangible lifelines that connected us to each other.
By January 2022, 300 million were meeting on Zoom each day, an increase of nearly 3000% since the final day of 2019. There are 3.3 trillion Zoom meeting minutes every year.
For millions living a COVID-affected remote life, those meetings were elective and work-related, you got paid to participate. For millions more, they were obligatory for education or health care requirements. And not always did they go as planned or intended.
Grateful my sons were adults and I did not have to supervise remote learning as well as complete my daily workload, I was way luckier than so many whose work lives suffered. Mostly the burden was on mothers; for single parents it was brutal.
I had already been zooming weekly in meetings with colleagues in different cities for the past five years for two different organizations that employ me, but COVID guillotined the possibility of in-person anything. No water cooler talk, no happy hours, no trainings at hotels with breakfast meetings beforehand, no retreats, no conferences, no work events, no awards ceremonies, no board meetings, no chats by the elevator before you get to the meeting room.
Zoom fatigue is a phenomenon, because it is tiring to stare at a screen for up to eight hours a day with different people jumping in and out, many not turning on their cameras, some forgetting to unmute, sharing screens awkwardly and taking what feels like forever to scroll down when you need them to.
"When we're on Zoom ... the brain has to work overtime to process information. It isn't picking up the social cues it's used to identifying [like hand movements, body movements and even a person's energy]."
The weariness I found — and millions of others did as well — was that zooming for two, three, four, eight hours a day, was about sitting in a chair at your desk, the same chair, the same desk and looking at the screen, the same screen.
All that zooming was apparently bad for all of our mental health. And opting out was not an option, that is if you wanted to keep your job.
Dr. Brian Wind, co-chair of the American Psychological Association and adjunct professor in Vanderbilt University's psychology department, told Health magazine, "When we're on Zoom ... the brain has to work overtime to process information. It isn't picking up the social cues it's used to identifying [like hand movements, body movements and even a person's energy]. This places stress on the mind and uses up a lot of energy."
The Social Science Research Network published the results of their study on "Zoom Exhaustion & Fatigue" with 10,591 participants. The problem, the scientists allege, arrives from "associations between five theoretical nonverbal mechanisms and Zoom Fatigue – mirror anxiety, being physically trapped, hyper gaze from a grid of staring faces, and the cognitive load from producing and interpreting nonverbal cues."
As a woman I am at higher risk for Zoom fatigue. Being white and older helps on the anxiety range. Another thing that may save me is personality; I am not an introvert, not in the least.
In her 2022 book, "Connected in Isolation: Digital Privilege in Unsettled Times," friend, former Northwestern University colleague, social scientist and now University of Zurich professor Eszter Hargittai writes, "For large portions of the population, the Internet became an essential lifeline."
In her study of participants in the U.S,. Italy and Switzerland in 2020, Hargittai writes, "What made the pandemic events unprecedented in the realm of the digital is that it was the first time in the Internet's history that it became completely front and center for the digitally connected parts of the world that were suddenly relying on it for the most essential of daily needs."
The downside of the digital reliance was that 50% of those in the U.S. with children reported feeling trapped in lockdown, while just over 40% of the respondents without children reported the same, Hargittai writes.
"Zoom's remote work functionality was the manifestation of what disabled communities fought for – and were denied – for decades."
Agreed. I do miss meeting in person for work. I had a few in-person work trainings in 2022 and 2023, but only a few. I loved the happy hour after the convening and going out to dinner with colleagues I had never met in real life.
But Zoom was not all exasperation and desperation because of the person going over the allotted time and the lack of a potty break.
Yes, Zoom was lifesaving and affirming at times and still can be. It was also inclusive and safe —for some. You could zoom from anywhere on the planet — anywhere that had Internet access. You did not have to be physically in an office or even your own home office.
For the disability, Deaf and neurodivergent communities, Zoom meetings at least approached the creation of a level playing field. Adding in transcription as a given was a boost. Except breakout rooms do not have transcription capability.
Impact on Disability Communities
Courtney Wade, founder of the Disability, Autistic, Mad, & Neuroqueer Solidarity Project, wrote in North Carolina State's University website, "Zoom's remote work functionality was the manifestation of what disabled communities fought for – and were denied – for decades. Remote access provides an opportunity for disabled and neurodivergent people to be employed without having to deal with access barriers often present in the physical workplace environment."
Telehealth also boomed because of the pandemic, supposedly giving everyone access to medical professionals when in person care was not possible. This was also a barrier for those in rural or Internet-blighted communities, forcing many to connect in the parking lots of fast food places — or grocery stores — or libraries, if they were open, that is. And if they could leave their homes.
From what I understand, on the other side of the equation, scheduling telehealth visits was at times logistical chaos and health care providers were not often able to discern accurately the patient's status or needs. And again, as with blanket homeschooling demands, it was impossible for everyone to zoom from home without a working laptop or internet access.
In February of 2022, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) and Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) introduced the Telemedicine Extension and Evaluation Act, "to ensure predictable patient access to telehealth following the end of the public health emergency, allow more time to gather data around virtual care utilization and efficacy, and avoid a sudden drop-off in access to care (known as the telehealth cliff)."
This was a request for more funding, a continuation of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services "Hospitals Without Walls" initiative launched in March 2020 to offer telehealth services during and after COVID, assuming there was going to be an after whenever that may be.
While telehealth services were part of the approved massive $1.5 trillion Consolidated Appropriations Act in 2022, the naming of COVID as a Public Health Emergency needs to happen every 90 days to keep the funding in place.
Did COVID permanently shift doctor-patient rapport to mimic the calls Jane Jetson made to her mom or George Jetson made to his boss, Mr. Spacely? Perhaps.
Zooming With Family and Friends
Zoom also made non-work gatherings possible.
My family held a few multi-generational Zoom meetings on holidays as we were scattered across the country and my brother Paul was in the final stages of multiple myeloma. Several months before he passed, he was able to zoom with as many of us who could attend, joking and waving from his leather recliner in the den, before he fell into the cliff drop that was the last several weeks of his life.
Older parents and relatives could see their loved ones every day if they cared to, while they were blocked from traveling, or were relegated to a group home or longterm care space.
My art classes on Saturdays via Zoom were often the best part of my week. I took classes in portrait drawing, landscapes, figure drawing using pastels, pen and ink, charcoal, pencils. The instructor was generous and affable, praising everyone for just the right touch. We shared our efforts on Cluster and she commented on how we could improve and what was already perfect.
I have heard from friends and acquaintances that Zoom was the final meeting place for friends, parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, spouses strangled by COVID, who leaned in from hospital rooms, where visitors were not allowed. I heard that it was both glorious and damned; the block to access in person was heartbreaking, but the breakthrough at least a small consolation.
Older parents and relatives could see their loved ones every day if they cared to, while they were blocked from traveling, or were relegated to a group home or longterm care space. They could feel the love; even octogenarians who claimed to be less than tech savvy, conquered the Zoom divide.
Zoom was a place to grieve and come together.
One Sunday a month –or every six weeks — I zoom with my friends from the Daily Northwestern, the campus newspaper where we worked together at Northwestern University, and truly looked forward to those one-hour chats we called "Daily Edit Board" meetings, even though we graduated in 1979. Zooming from sites across the country and Europe, we catch each other up on work and family —and in one fell swoop — an avalanche of retirements.
It's cliché to call something a blessing and a curse because you can say that about anything from denim jackets to boxed mac 'n cheese. But Zoom is both of those; it is also a million other things, and it is a connection to people, sometimes it is all we have with others. And it is free. There is no high gas price to pay to commute, no parking fees, no price of admission. No need to find your vaccination card in your purse or on your phone.
You can be with anyone anywhere in the world anytime.
Many assumed that because of the pandemic everyone would fall on the side of declaring a video substitution of human face to face interaction the next best thing, or perhaps even the best thing, or the worst thing. This is an ongoing conversation. But we have all been changed irreversibly.
Sixty years ago, before there was "Star Trek" and "Star Wars," Jane Jetson spoke to George on a TV screen to see when he was coming home for dinner. George talked to Mr. Spacely on a screen to see what his next assignment is or learn that he is in trouble and must explain himself.
I silence my Google calendar alert and head into the third Zoom meeting of the day, turn on my ring light and pull up the documents I need on my second screen. Start video.
Editor’s note: Excerpt from "Zoom" in "The Time We Have: Essays on Pandemic Living." Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2024.
