Tired of video conferencing and zoom meetings? What to do?

Go back to the old fashioned phone call

I had an old fashioned phone call with a friend. No zoom meetings, no facetime, no video, no text or chat. Just a regular voice call. And I must say it was refreshing. We get so much screen time these days. Zoom fatigue is even a thing. We think or better hope that those online video conferences or family gatherings can somewhat make up for the social distancing we have to do. But this phone call was what made me happy last week.

It was partially because of the nature of the call. I will admit that, but it was also the familiarity of this way of talking to each other. We’re getting used to communicating without seeing each other. That is all we did when we were younger. We didn’t have all these fancy technology possibilities yet. We fantasized about it, joked about it really. About how that would be, a video call when you’re hair is a mess or you have your pajamas on and everyone could see the clutter in your room.

But we had to rely on the phone. One with a thread connected to it. So if your phone was bang in the middle of the living room, your whole family could enjoy your conversations. Sometimes you could cover up some parts of the story, but mostly they knew what was going on. Or maybe you sat on the stairs for hours, when the phone was in the hallway. Or when the thread was long enough to reach the staircase you could be trapped in a cold hallway. Yes, I said hours. I cannot imagine talking on a zoom call for hours, but on the phone…no problem.

Heart-to-heart

It’s a way people can have heart-to-hearts when they cannot be face to face. It is not at all strange that I was so excited about such a simple act. In the early days of telephones, it was primarily used as a business tool, for practical arrangements and with emergencies. But the phone was increasingly used for social purposes. Mainly by women, to stay connected. The founders of the tool where upset and called it idle gossip. Until they realized it wasn’t an annoyance. It increased profit and they started to target this personal use in their advertisement.

Nowadays a phone isn’t a single use instrument anymore. It has multiple functions that are useful throughout the day. To search for information and for staying in touch with friends and family. Research done by Berkeley showed that the phone has found a special niche. It became the preferred media for talking to your intimates. Parents, adult children, people in whom we confide, people to whom we feel close. These findings are consistent with other studies that show that intimacy is more common in personal phone calls than in personal emails. Or even in face-to-face meetings.

Zoom meetings fatigue

So, when you are feeling tired of all these zoom meetings and video calls, have a good old fashioned girl talk on the phone. It feels familiar, it focuses on the conversation instead of how you look while talking or listening. There appears to be something special about voice-to-voice that makes people turn to the phone call when it matters most. Call your friends and have a nice long talk about everything and nothing. Relaxing on the couch. Concentrating on the voice on the other side of the line and enjoying the conversation.