The Online Newspaper of Lakewood High School

Lakewood Times

Lakewood Times

Lakewood Times

    Is Zoom perfect?

    Is Zoom perfect?

    Everyone has experienced at least one Zoom meeting during this time of social isolation. Zoom is an online platform that has helped many teachers continue their lessons during this difficult time, but despite its ease, is Zoom as perfect as everyone thinks it is?

     

    Bbc.com claims that Zoom can drain your energy and make you feel quite exhausted. Being on a video call requires more focus than a face-to-face conversation because we have to work harder to process non-verbal cues like facial expressions, the tone of the voice, and body language. Paying more attention to these consumes a lot of energy, and you cannot relax into the conversation naturally.

     

    Furthermore, silence, which creates a natural rhythm in a real-life conversation, can create anxiety in a video call. A 2014 study showed that delays on phone or conferencing systems shaped our views of people negatively. Even delays of 1.2 seconds made people perceive the respond as less friendly.

     

    One more factor is that if we are physically on camera, we are very aware of having an audience, which makes you feel like you need to perform. It’s also very hard for people not to look at their own face if they can see it on-screen, or not to be conscious of how they behave in front of the camera.

     

    According to forbes.com, another negative side of Zoom is linked with privacy. An investigation concluded that Zoom’s software was set up to automatically give email addresses to a system, which used them to match the users with their profiles on LinkedIn. LinkedIn users who subscribed to the LinkedIn Sales Navigator service could then click on a LinkedIn icon next to a Zoom user to learn about their locations, employer, and job position, even if nobody in the meeting requested it.

     

    Sure, Zoom has provided assistance to many schools in the United States, but just like any other online platform, it has its disadvantages. We hope that this situation ends in the near future so that we can go back to our normal lives and finally talk to people face to face.

    More to Discover