If you’ve ever finished a long day of video meetings feeling unusually drained, you’re experiencing something researchers have been studying with increasing precision: videoconferencing fatigue, commonly known as “Zoom fatigue.” Although the term originally surfaced through casual observation during the early days of remote work, it now has a firm foundation in peer-reviewed research. Scientists have spent the past several years examining what makes video-based communication uniquely tiring, and the findings consistently highlight a subtle but important factor: the misalignment of gaze during video calls.

This isn’t something most people consciously notice. On a Zoom call, everything seems mostly normal—faces appear, people speak, the conversation flows. But beneath that surface normalcy, the social cues that usually guide interactions don’t function quite the same way. The geometry of how webcams and screens are positioned creates small distortions in gaze that the brain quietly works to resolve. Over time, this additional effort adds to the overall sense of fatigue.

This article explores what the research actually shows about how gaze misalignment contributes to Zoom fatigue, how even minor angular shifts matter, and why aligning a webcam more closely with a user’s natural eye level may reduce part of the cognitive load associated with video meetings.

What the Research Says About Videoconferencing Fatigue

A turning point in understanding video-meeting exhaustion came with the development of the Zoom Exhaustion & Fatigue (ZEF) Scale, published in 2021 in Computers in Human Behavior Reports.

The ZEF Scale demonstrated that videoconferencing creates measurable increases in several kinds of fatigue—visual, social, emotional, and motivational—distinct from the fatigue associated with general computer use. The difference arises from how video calls alter key elements of natural social interaction, including timing, attention, facial feedback, and importantly, gaze.

The idea that video calls impose extra cognitive load aligns with a broader theoretical framework introduced by Stanford researcher Jeremy Bailenson in Technology, Mind, and Behavior (2021).

In that work, Bailenson described how video meetings compress or distort nonverbal cues, increase self-monitoring, restrict natural movement, and introduce slight delays that disrupt conversational rhythm. Each of these contributes to the psychological experience of fatigue. But the past several years of research have allowed scientists to go further—quantifying how specific aspects of video communication influence cognitive effort. One of the most important developments in this space is the study of gaze eccentricity, or the angular misalignment between where someone appears to be looking on video and where they would be looking in a face-to-face interaction.

Understanding Gaze Eccentricity: A Small Angle With Big Effects

In a 2025 study published in Computers in Human Behavior, researchers examined how angular deviations in gaze—referred to as eccentricity—affect the clarity of gaze interpretation.

In this context, eccentricity is simply the angle between the camera lens and the point on the screen where the conversational partner’s face appears. It is a geometric measure, not a psychological one. The study found that even small misalignments make it harder for participants to perceive where someone is looking.

The thresholds were strikingly low:

• At 2.7 degrees of horizontal eccentricity, and

• At 5.4 degrees of vertical eccentricity,

participants already began experiencing measurable difficulty determining gaze direction.

These angles are barely noticeable in everyday life. They correspond to shifting one’s eyes just slightly above or below the camera. But when that shift becomes consistent throughout a conversation, it subtly disrupts the brain’s ability to decode one of the most important social cues humans use: where another person’s attention is directed.

The effect is not dramatic, but it is continuous. And because the brain is extremely sensitive to directional cues in eye movement, the mismatch between expected and perceived gaze forces additional cognitive processing. That processing contributes to the cumulative experience of Zoom fatigue.

Why Typical Webcams Amplify Gaze Misalignment

Real-world setups tend to exaggerate these angular distortions far beyond the thresholds identified in the research. A webcam sitting on top of a large monitor can easily sit 20 degrees above eye level. A laptop camera on a desk often sits 10 to 20 degrees below it. External webcams placed to the side create lateral offsets of similar magnitude.

These deviations are four to seven times larger than the misalignment shown to make gaze harder to interpret in the ScienceDirect study. And because these offsets occur continuously during video calls, the effect compounds. Your conversational partner appears to be looking slightly downward even when they are focused on you. You appear to be looking slightly above or below them even when you are engaged. People unconsciously adjust, but the adjustments require effort.

A 2024 study in Business & Information Systems Engineering supports this interpretation, finding that reduced clarity in gaze and micro-expressions increases the cognitive work required for turn-taking and interpreting engagement during video meetings.

These small but persistent perceptual mismatches introduce ambiguity where in-person conversation provides automatic clarity.

The Brain Works Harder When Gaze Is Off-Angle

Further support comes from neuroscience. A 2021 study published in Frontiers in Robotics and AI compared how the brain responds to real-time human eye contact versus artificial or misaligned gaze.

The researchers found that natural, synchronous eye contact activates the right temporo-parietal junction (rTPJ)—a region associated with social cognition—more efficiently than misaligned gaze. When the gaze does not align, the brain has to perform additional work to decode intent and attention.

This finding dovetails with the eccentricity research: even slight angular mismatches, which frequently occur during video calls due to camera placement, may reduce the efficiency of social cue processing. Over a long day of meetings, that inefficiency contributes to the sense of mental strain often described as Zoom fatigue.

Zoom Fatigue Is Not Just Discomfort — It Affects Behavior

A 2024 study in Scientific Reports adds another dimension to the picture.

Participants who experienced higher levels of videoconference fatigue showed increased conformity during group decisions, suggesting that cognitive depletion impacts how people think and respond. This highlights an important point: videoconferencing fatigue isn’t just a matter of feeling tired; it can influence social dynamics and decision-making.

Taken together, these findings reinforce that Zoom fatigue is a product of multiple overlapping factors, with gaze misalignment playing a significant role.

How Eye-Level Camera Alignment Fits Into This Research

The published studies do not evaluate specific devices, nor do they make prescriptive recommendations about hardware. But the underlying mechanism is simple: the smaller the gaze eccentricity, the more natural the eye-contact cues.

Cameras positioned at eye level reduce the angular distance between the lens and the point on the screen where the conversational partner’s face appears. When the camera is closer to where your eyes naturally focus, the misalignment shrinks toward the thresholds identified in the eccentricity study. This improves the fidelity of gaze direction cues, making them closer to what people expect in face-to-face interaction.

The iContact Camera is one example of a device designed around this principle. By placing the lens at the user’s natural eye line—and directly in front of the portion of the screen showing the other participant—it minimizes vertical and horizontal eccentricity. The improvement is not dramatic or transformative; rather, it subtly supports the visual conditions under which the brain processes social cues most efficiently. In practical terms, it allows users to look at the person on screen while appearing to look at them naturally, reducing one of the cognitive micro-burdens identified in the research.

This does not eliminate videoconferencing fatigue, which has multiple causes. But it does address the specific issue of gaze alignment, one of the most quantifiable contributors documented so far.

Conclusion: The Geometry of Gaze Matters

The more researchers study videoconferencing, the clearer the picture becomes. Zoom fatigue arises from a constellation of factors—compressed nonverbal cues, reduced movement, self-view, timing delays, and the mental effort required to bridge subtle gaps in communication. Among these factors, gaze eccentricity stands out as a measurable, structural issue that is present in virtually every video call.

Even a few degrees of misalignment—2.7° horizontally, 5.4° vertically—can begin to disrupt gaze interpretation. Everyday webcam setups often exceed 20°, placing users far outside the range in which gaze behaves naturally. The brain compensates for this mismatch continuously, and that compensation quietly contributes to the subjective experience of fatigue.

Improving gaze alignment—whether through repositioning a webcam, raising a laptop, or using a device designed to place the camera at eye level—can reduce that specific cognitive load. It does not solve every challenge of video communication, but it moves the interaction one step closer to the conditions that human social cognition is optimized for.

In a world where video meetings are now a core part of daily work, even subtle improvements in gaze alignment can make conversations feel more intuitive, more connected, and a little less taxing.