Your Zoom conference just wrapped up now you and everyone else on the call are waving goodbye to the camera. Why? It's already established the meeting is ending, so there seems little point in waving goodbye to everyone too. CNN Business offered one possible explanation: the lack of human contact.

Essentially, when we conference call through our video screens, we lack some of the more subtle social cues we rely on to indicate the end of the meeting, like closing a notebook, checking your watch, putting things in a bag or getting ready to stand up, and so we overcompensate with a big wave goodbye that everyone can see. This apparently helps make the end of a meeting less awkward and abrupt than just clicking "leave meeting" and letting your square disappear into the ether. We want some sort of cue that the interaction is over, and in an age of virtual meetings, waving seems to fit this bill.