I made a horrifying discovery during my fourth video call of the day last Tuesday. As my colleagues droned on about quarterly projections and resource allocations, I found myself fixated not on their faces or the shared presentation, but on my own digital reflection lurking in that little rectangle at the bottom of the screen. Specifically, I was transfixed by the way my neck folds created a topographical map of middle age when I looked down at my notes. Had that always been there? Was my jawline really that undefined? Who was this jowly stranger staring back at me, and how long had he been impersonating me in meetings?
Welcome to the psychological minefield of the Zoom gaze – that uniquely modern experience of watching yourself in real-time as you interact with others, a form of sustained self-scrutiny humans were never meant to endure.
Before video calls became our primary form of professional communication, I might go entire workdays only briefly glimpsing my reflection – a passing glance in the bathroom mirror, perhaps a vague impression in a darkened window. Now I stare at my own face for hours each day, watching it age in real-time under the unflattering glow of my laptop screen. It’s like being trapped in the world’s most boring reality show starring the world’s most reluctant participant: me.
The true horror of the Zoom gaze isn’t just that we see ourselves – it’s that we see ourselves as others see us, stripped of the psychological filters and flattering angles our brains typically apply when we look in mirrors. This is a version of ourselves we were never meant to witness: ourselves in conversation, ourselves thinking, ourselves reacting. It turns out my thinking face makes me look like I’m trying to solve a particularly challenging math problem while also smelling something suspicious. This wasn’t information I needed to have.
I first noticed this phenomenon during the early days of our collective pivot to video meetings in 2020. In a physical conference room, I’d been confident, engaged, focused entirely on the discussion at hand. On video, I became hyper-aware of every facial expression, every awkward gesture, every unfortunate camera angle. Was that how my smile always looked? Did my eyes always do that strange thing when I was processing information? Was my listening face actually my plotting-revenge face? Did I always tilt my head at that odd angle when speaking?
I mentioned this newly developed self-consciousness to a colleague after a particularly marathon day of back-to-back calls.
“It’s exhausting, right?” she said. “I spent the entire budget meeting counting the new wrinkles around my eyes. I have fourteen, by the way. Fourteen new wrinkles I never knew existed until Zoom showed them to me in 1080p.”
“I’ve started turning off self-view,” another team member confessed. “I was getting too distracted by watching myself talk. But then I get paranoid I’m making weird faces and no one’s telling me, so I turn it back on.”
This, I realized, was the impossible paradox of the Zoom gaze. Seeing yourself is distracting and psychologically depleting, but not seeing yourself creates a new anxiety about what expressions might be crossing your unmonitored face.
The research confirms what we’ve all intuitively felt: this constant self-view is psychologically taxing. Studies suggest that seeing yourself during video calls triggers heightened self-evaluation and comparison, activating many of the same neural pathways as when we look in mirrors, but for extended periods. It’s like being forced to have a staring contest with yourself for hours while also trying to perform complex professional tasks. No wonder we end calls feeling strangely depleted.
I remember sitting in design meetings years ago, when video conferencing was first becoming mainstream. We discussed user experience, connection quality, screen sharing functionality – all the technical aspects of making remote communication work. Not once did we consider the psychological impact of forcing users to stare at themselves throughout these interactions. It was a blind spot so obvious in retrospect that I’m embarrassed we missed it.
The true weirdness of this experience becomes clear when you try to imagine its physical-world equivalent. Picture walking into a meeting room where one entire wall is a mirror, forcing you to watch yourself as you present quarterly results. Or imagine trying to have a serious conversation with a colleague while holding a hand mirror at chest level, glancing down at your own reactions every few seconds. We would immediately recognize this as bizarre, distracting, and psychologically unsound. Yet this is exactly the experience we’ve normalized in our digital communications.
My personal low point with the Zoom gaze came during an important client presentation last year. I was sharing my screen, walking through a complex proposal, when I noticed the client looking slightly to the side of their camera – presumably at my video thumbnail on their screen. Was there something wrong with my appearance? I tried to casually check my self-view while continuing to speak. Food in my teeth? Unfortunate hair situation? Visible nostril issue?
Finding nothing obviously amiss, I nonetheless became increasingly self-conscious. My delivery grew stilted as my attention split between my content and concern about how I looked presenting it. After the call, I obsessively replayed the recording, scrutinizing my performance from angles I would never have considered in a physical meeting room. The presentation went fine, but the experience left me mentally exhausted in a way that in-person meetings never had.
This mirrors what psychologists call the “spotlight effect” – our tendency to overestimate how much others notice about us. Video calls supercharge this effect by literally putting us in a spotlight, one where we can watch ourselves squirm in real-time. It creates a cognitive tax that wasn’t factored into the workday before our professional lives moved online.
What fascinates me about the Zoom gaze is how it’s reshaping our professional personas. I’ve watched colleagues develop what can only be described as “Zoom personalities” – slightly amplified versions of themselves with more animated expressions, more deliberate gestures, more carefully controlled facial reactions. We’re becoming our own emotionally exaggerated avatars, performing for the camera in ways we never did across a conference table.
I caught myself doing this just yesterday – deliberately nodding more visibly than I normally would during a colleague’s presentation, consciously arranging my face into an expression of thoughtful interest rather than allowing my natural reactions to flow. It wasn’t inauthentic, exactly, but it was calibrated for the medium in a way my in-person communication never needed to be.
This self-surveillance extends beyond just meetings. I’ve found myself adjusting my home office setup not primarily for comfort or functionality, but to create a more flattering camera angle. I’ve rearranged lighting, tested different background arrangements, even purchased a ring light that makes me look slightly less like I’m broadcasting from a haunted basement. My bookshelf behind me is now carefully curated – intellectual enough to suggest depth, but not so obscure as to seem pretentious. These aren’t vanity choices; they’re adaptations to a world where my digital presentation has become inextricably linked with my professional identity.
The gender dynamics of the Zoom gaze add another layer of complexity. Female colleagues report even greater self-consciousness about their on-screen appearance, often feeling pressure to maintain professional grooming standards for video that weren’t as scrutinized in physical offices. Meanwhile, many male colleagues (myself included) discovered for the first time what we actually look like when talking – a revelation that has sent beard trimmers and hair product sales soaring.
My wife, who works in healthcare administration, described her experience: “I used to get ready in the morning thinking about how I’d look to other people, face-to-face. Now I get ready thinking about how I’ll look slightly from below, in whatever bizarre lighting my laptop camera decides to create. I’ve learned that certain earrings catch the light weirdly on camera. Who needed to know that?”
The most insidious effect of the Zoom gaze might be how it follows us even when we’re not on camera. I’ve caught myself becoming more self-conscious during in-person meetings, momentarily thrown by not being able to monitor my own expressions. After months of seeing myself through others’ eyes, being limited to just my internal experience feels strangely incomplete. I miss my digital mirror, even while recognizing how it distorts my self-perception.
There are ways to mitigate the psychological tax of the Zoom gaze, of course. Many platforms now allow hiding self-view while remaining visible to others – though this option feels a bit like flying blind after becoming accustomed to constant self-monitoring. Some people place sticky notes over their own video thumbnail, forcing their attention toward others in the call. Others minimize the gallery view entirely when not actively needing to see participants.
I’ve experimented with all these approaches, with mixed success. The most effective strategy I’ve found is scheduling short breaks between video calls – creating deliberate gaps to step away from any reflective surfaces and reacquaint myself with the liberating experience of not seeing my own face for a few blessed minutes.
Perhaps the most important realization is simply acknowledging the strangeness of what we’re doing. The Zoom gaze represents an unprecedented shift in human communication – we’re the first generation to regularly watch ourselves interact in real-time over extended periods. Of course this creates new kinds of self-consciousness. Of course it’s psychologically taxing. We’re engaging with others through a medium that constantly reminds us of ourselves.
So the next time you find yourself distracted by your own video thumbnail during an important meeting – counting your wrinkles, adjusting your posture, wondering if that’s really what your smile looks like – remember that you’re experiencing a fundamentally new form of human self-awareness. One we weren’t designed for, haven’t evolved to handle, and are all figuring out together, one awkward video call at a time.
And maybe try hiding self-view. After all, everyone else is too busy staring at their own faces to notice yours.
