When can nouns be used as verbs? I’ve heard quite a few people from Mainland China say something like this:

每个周末我都会和我的父母一起视频。
I video call my parents every weekend.

Now, 视频 just means “video”, which means it is a noun.
The dictionaries on my phone and the Internet corroborate that this word  only has one definition, as mentioned.
However, it is clear that 视频 is used like a verb in this case. Why does this happen? What other nouns can undergo the same change, to become a verb in colloquial speech?
A noun becomes a verb, this phenomenon exists in many human languages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthimeria

For example,

- How can I contact you?
- You can message me. / You can send me a message.


"message me" in Chinese is "发短信给我" or "给我发短信"

"发" is the verb but "短信我" make sense too.

If you speak "你可以短信我", Chinese people can understand very well.

BUT, "短信我" is rarely to be used.

Why? Because 短信 hasn't been using for a very long time, so it's still a noun, whereas 视频 has been using for a very long time, so 视频 is becoming a verb little by little, which is the abbreviation of "发起视频通话" or "发起视频聊天".

When people started to use the mobile phone a lot, Internet became famous at the same time too. At that time, a Chinese company Tencent developed a software, named QQ, which is similar with Skype. QQ was so hot that everyone used it. At that time, Chinese people kept saying "你可以Q我" to express "you can send me a message by QQ". You see, QQ, which is just a name of a product, became a verb too.

Basically, if a verb is too complex or too long but used a lot, people gonna try to simplify it. That's it.

So it's hard to say when nouns can be used as verbs, you need to live with Chinese people, immersing yourself in the Chinese culture, then you are able to answer this question...

The good thing is, any language is a very stable system, no need to worry a lot about these kinds of changes, these changes are extremely slow, you have enough time to learn about them.