I know many of you might cringe at this proclamation: I like Zoom (FaceTime, Skype, etc.). I like celebrating birthdays with distant friends and relatives. I like chats my snowbird friends. I like attending classes in my bunny slippers and uncombed hair with a coffee cup in my hand.
Celebrate Occasions with Distant Friends and Family
I’ll agree, those tedious Zoom committee meetings we were forced into during Covid were awful. In 2020, we were all afraid to talk face-to-face. People switched to Zoom. At one point in the pandemic, Zoom was the most downloaded app on the iPhone – more than Candy Crush. (1) Zoom reported more usage in May-July 2020 than it did in all of 2019.(2)
Committee meetings can be boring in person. On the computer they can be deadly. And most of the Zoom meetings we were subjected to had far too many people to make the interactions natural.
Some people who were forced into using Zoom for meetings started to see it could have a more personal use. According to Earthweb, over 60% of Zoom users use Zoom for entertainment with family and friends. (3)
Smaller, more personal, Zooms can be fun. Zoom is much more fun than a phone call. If the group is small enough, six or fewer people – eight max. Many of our celebrations are two-three couples. You can see everyone’s face and their expressions. You can see their smiles if you say something funny or downturned eyes if you say something sad.
With fewer people, you can have more natural interactions. You don’t have to worry as much about the technology shutting off a speaker when two people talk at once, because you are familiar with your friend’s or family’s interaction style.
How do we use Zoom? We celebrate birthdays and holidays on Zoom. We all grab some wine and make a toast. We have a smart TV and I can mirror my iPhone on the large TV screen so it’s almost like we are in the same room together.
We use Zoom to keep in touch with our reading group during the summer when the snow birds migrate back north. Because people are in their home setting, you get some crazy dynamics. One reading group member is like the Energizer® bunny. She’s always moving. She carries her phone with her as she walks through the house talking with us. We rarely see her face. As she’s walking the phone tilts up and we see the ceiling. When she walks down the stairs we stare at her banister. It’s part of what endears her to us. (Love ya, A!).
I preferred the Zoom university classes held by our community during Covid to the classes held at our clubhouse. Some people didn’t like it. They wanted to be there in person. I loved it. I didn’t have to get dressed and travel to the meeting room. I could watch the class in my sweat pants. If the class got boring, I could do some house work and not miss anything important.
Taking a Class in the Comfort of Your Home
Some people do have more trouble with virtual meetings. People who wait for pauses in conversation may have a harder time getting their turn to speak. That isn’t as much of a problem with a smaller group of friends who are familiar with each other’s talking patterns.
There is they physical aspect of looking at the screen so intensely. You can actually get brain fatigue. According to neuroscience experts, our systems find staring so at other people's faces on screens unnatural - it gives us so much information to process. It's brain overload. It helps to shift your attention to each speaker as they speak. Also, we forget to blink leaving our eye lids heavy and our eyes dehydrated. So, remember to blink.
There is a misconception that older people don’t use virtual technology. According to Zoom app download statistics, 29% of Zoom users are over 50, and that’s impressive considering many of the younger users use Zoom for business, while many of the older users are using it for personal use. In our senior community (average age over 80), I conducted a survey of all residents to see what kinds of social media they used. Over 23% of the people responded they use Zoom for talking with friends.
It's a good thing that older people are adopting Zoom. A study by the University of West London’s Geller Institute of Ageing and Memory showed that people who used technology to keep in touch with friends and family showed less cognitive decline than those who didn’t. The study asked 11,418 men and women over the age of 50 how often they interacted with friends and family online, then completed memory tests that involved recalling a list of 10 words at various intervals. The participants who only used “traditional,” face-to-face communication showed more signs of cognitive decline than those who used technology to keep in touch with friends and family. (4) Maybe it's because they had to figure out how to use the technology.
Finally, if you still think Zooming is boring, you can build excitement with virtual party services. For a fee, you can have virtual pub trivia, scavenger hunts, a virtual mentalist, a virtual DJ party, a virtual game night out. (5,6) The list goes on. You could probably do these yourself without paying for the service.
If you haven’t experienced the fun you can have meeting with a few friends to chat or celebrate a special occasion, get zooming. It will be fun and it might stave off dementia.
References
1 Conor Calway, Zoom Is Apple’s Most Downloaded App of 2020, tech.co, December 7, 2020
2. Shannon Bond, Zoom Turns Record Profit Thanks To Coronavirus Shutdowns, NPR, August 31, 2020
3. Jason Wise, Zoom Statistics 2022, September 23, 2022
4. Rob Picheta Talking on Zoom could help older people stave off dementia, may 15, 2021
5 Amelia Hill, Using Zoom could help older people avoid dementia, study reveals, The Guardian, May 14, 2021
One of my friends emailed that she played Yahtzee with her daughter and son-in-law over Skype during Covid. Clever idea. So zooming can be fun,