You're not alone if you can't stop yourself from waving goodbye at the end of a Zoom call.
Cody Kennedy never plans on speaking extra loudly during videoconference calls. He never plans on leaning in so close to his computer camera that barely anything other than his forehead is visible to his colleagues. And he certainly never plans on ending virtual meetings with a wave goodbye that is so exaggerated, he cringes at the sight of his own video feed.
“I have never felt the need to wave in person,” Kennedy, 36, the chief communications and marketing officer for the city of Olathe, Kansas, said. “What am I doing?”
Thrust into more videoconferences than ever due to the coronavirus pandemic, many of us have discovered a shared quirk from within the tiny squares of digital real estate in our new meeting format: the Zoom wave.
Significantly livelier than one in nearly any face-to-face setting, the wave at the conclusion of these remote meetings causes a range of reactions among those who do it, from embarrassment to enthusiasm.
Yet psychologists, body language experts and those who study digital communication all agree: Waving at the end of Zoom, Microsoft Teams and other videoconference calls is a good thing — an indication that just because we have been socially distanced for the last 14 months does not mean we have become socially inept.
