How to Beat Zoom Fatigue—and Set Healthy Boundaries

IT’S one of many phrases none of us thought we would use in everyday conversation, yet here we are.

Now more than six months into a global pandemic, Zoom calls have quickly become the preferred alternative to in-person interactions, whether it’s a work meeting, happy hour, wedding, or birthday celebration. While it feels easy to hop on a Zoom call for work, followed by virtual social events on nights and weekends, all without ever leaving home, the back-to-back chats can actually be exhausting.

Quick access to your coworkers, family, and friends probably offered much-needed comfort in early March and April. However, as the pandemic drags on, you might be less enthusiastic about the constant Zooming. If so, it’s a good idea to put some boundaries in place.

The What, When, and How of Boundary-Setting

Still, in both your personal and professional life, it’s easier said than done to opt-out altogether. If you work a 9 to 5, you probably don’t have a ton of control over how many Zoom meetings your boss schedules you for, or how often they occur.

Nadia Brown, CEO and founder of The Doyenne Agency, a sales training organization for corporate employers, says it’s a good idea to approach your boss with some alternative options when you can’t say no flat out.

Other things that might help to fight off Zoom fatigue are to block off times before and after meetings to catch your breath, and limit nonurgent calls to one or two per week. For short or informal conversations, you can even make a suggestion to switch up video chats with “old-school” communication like a phone call. (Remember those?) Zoom might feel like the best method to talk to people at the moment, but it’s OK to think outside the box if you feel worn out.

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Is Everybody Doing … OK? Let’s Ask Social Media

Which was the saddest day of them all? This is the question you may be asking yourself, surveying the wreckage of 2020 thus far. There are so many contenders to consider: was it Thursday, March 12, the day after Tom Hanks announced he was sick and the N.B.A. announced it was canceled? Was it Monday, June 1, the day peaceful protesters were tear gassed so that President Trump could comfortably stroll to his Bible-wielding photo op?

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Was it Monday, June 1, the day peaceful protesters were tear gassed so that President Trump could comfortably stroll to his Bible-wielding photo op? Actually, it was neither, according to the Computational Story Lab of the University of Vermont. Instead, the lab offers this answer: Sunday, May 31. That day was not only the saddest day of 2020 so far, it was also the saddest day recorded by the lab in the last 13 years. Or at least, the saddest day on Twitter.

The researchers call it the Hedonometer. The Hedonometer has been up and running for more than a decade now, measuring word choices across millions of tweets, every day, the world over, to come up with a moving measure of well-being. In fact, the last time The New York Times checked in with the Hedonometer team, in 2015, the main finding to emerge was our tendency toward relentless positivity on social media. “One of the happiest years on Twitter, at least for English,” Dr. Danforth said recently with a note of rue. That result now seems an artifact from an ancient era. “Since then it has been a long decline.”What has remained constant is this: “Happiness is hard to know. It’s hard to measure,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of great data about how people are doing.”

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Keeping up kids' mental health during coronavirus


Last week in Chicago, a 14-year-old made a list of family members he thought were likely to live and those likely to die. In Cincinnati, a six-year-old worried that if he couldn’t celebrate his birthday with his friends, he wouldn’t get any older. Meanwhile, my three-year-old daughter has had more bathroom accidents in the past few days than she previously had so far this year.


The physical symptoms of the novel coronavirus are well documented. The mental health effects, less so. And though children are less likely to become ill, we’re only starting to understand what the pandemic might mean for children’s mental health and emotional well-being.


It’s a lot for a kid to process. There’s the disruption of normal activities, the sudden split from friends, and, of course, fear of the virus itself. These difficulties are compounded for children who rely on school meals, or whose family members are sickened or facing sudden unemployment.

“What kids are telling me is that they are afraid of the unknown"

The response to the pandemic among kids spans the spectrum. Some are enjoying the novelty of time off from school, while others are experiencing what Chicago-based clinical psychologist John Duffy described as “a level of fear approaching terror.”

“What kids are telling me is that they are afraid of the unknown,” says Duffy, author of Parenting the New Teen in the Age of Anxiety.“They feel this kind of foreboding, that something awful is about to happen. And they feel they have a limited agency over it.”

Experts are also seeing some differences between younger and older kids, as well as children who might already be dealing with depression and anxiety.

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