Your glitchy video calls may make people mistrust you

Nell Greenfieldboyce

December 03, 2025 / 8:26 am

Those pesky glitches that occasionally interrupt your video calls may be more than just an annoyance — they could undermine your success in everything from job interviews to sales pitches to court cases.

That's because brief video freezes, lags, or audio echoes can create an unpleasant "uncanny" sensation that makes a viewer less likely to trust the person they're interacting with through a face-to-face video connection, according to a series of experiments published in Nature .

The findings suggest that people with subpar internet access, like those in rural areas, may be getting dinged by the very technology that's been lauded as a way of ensuring that they have equal acces

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