Video conferencing has become commonplace in today’s work environment. Video calls are convenient, save money, and provide the psychological benefit of face-to-face communication. They enable the hiring of remote workers and facilitate easy connection with international colleagues. But scientific studies are revealing that engagement over video platforms is not without its disadvantages.

I am a biomedical scientist and author of Pleased to Meet Me: Genes, Germs, and the Curious Forces that Make Us Who We Are, a book that explores hidden forces that influence our behavior. As in the business world, we have seen steep inclines in the use of video conferencing in academia for job interviews, online classes, team meetings, and international symposia. I’ve been monitoring research that exposes the potential downsides of video calls so that we can use this technology more wisely.

Intuition might have you thinking that face-to-face contact is better at getting the creative juices flowing than a voice-only phone call. A 2022 study led by business professor Melanie Brucks, however, found that videoconferencing was detrimental to creative idea generation because communicators feel obligated to stare at the screen.

The experiment pitted videoconference groups against in-person groups to see which could find more creative uses for different objects. The study involved participants in five different countries, consistently finding that in-person groups came up with........

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