A World Without Touch Is a World Without Trust

Touch is our first language. Older than words, deeper than thought. Before we can speak or remember, we understand the grammar of skin against skin; the newborn’s cry quiets at their parents' touch. This is where we all begin: not with boxes or categories, with contact.

Adult life was tactile—handshakes that lingered, embraces that meant something, the casual touch of a hand on a shoulder. We were a species comfortable in our own skin, fluent in the oldest form of communication.

But something changed. We seem to live increasingly separate, sanitized, and untouched lives. We text instead of visit. We wave instead of embrace. We nod instead of reach. Our relationships have become sterilized, distanced, disembodied. Researchers call it “touch famine” - but famine implies absence. This is something closer to erasure.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about my aunt - not by blood, but in all the ways that mattered. She hugged everyone: mailmen, baristas, strangers’ kids, sometimes to the horror of their parents. She was one of those people others found embarrassing in the way some find joy embarrassing - too much, too open, too sincere.

But she lived to 94. Rarely ill. Surrounded by people who adored her. She was never alone, and never unloved. I’m not saying touch kept her alive. But I’m not saying it didn’t. She understood something we’ve lost: that the body has its own intelligence. That warmth doesn’t always come from words. That connection isn’t just a feeling, it’s a physical act.

We didn’t grow out of touch. We were trained out of it.

And maybe it’s time to unlearn that.

How We Got Here

We could blame smartphones.

We could blame Instagram, TikTok and so on.

It's the easy answer.

But I don't think the decline in touch is entirely reducible to screen time, as tempting as that story is. It’s Technological, yes. But it's also structural. Cultural. Epidemiological. It's a slow convergence of forces that have collectively chiseled human contact out of daily life.

Start with demographics. In 1940, less than 8% of American households were single-person. Today, it’s more than a quarter. That means more people live alone, dine alone, sleep alone. No daily hugs from a spouse, no incidental affection from a roommate brushing past. Living alone doesn’t mandate touch starvation – but it makes it easier.

Then add norms. For good reasons (and some complicated ones) we’ve rewritten the rules of public and professional touch. Schools and offices now often operate under strict no-touch policies. The intentions are safety, respect, boundaries – all vital. But there’s collateral damage: positive touch disappears along with the problematic kind. For many, especially men, physical affection is now seen as risky or suspect unless it’s clearly romantic or confined to sports.

Now bring in the pandemic. COVID-19 accelerated the retreat. For a time, we were literally ordered not to touch. Social distancing became a virtue. Even when lockdowns lifted, the habits stuck. A 2022 survey found over half of Britons reported they now hugged non-household members less often. Touch didn’t just vanish – it started to feel taboo. Some of that caution remains.

And all of this happens in a digital context that rewards disembodiment. We text. We video call. We "React." Our communication is abundant, but our contact is vanishingly rare.

The Body Keeps the Score

So what? Does a little less hugging really matter?

Yes. The research is overwhelming. Touch is not optional. It’s not sentimental fluff. It’s biological infrastructure. We’re wired for it.

Affectionate touch – a hug, a handhold, a shoulder squeeze – triggers cascades of neurochemical effects. Oxytocin rises. Cortisol drops. The parasympathetic nervous system kicks in. Stress eases. Blood pressure falls. The heart rate slows. These are not trivial physiological shifts - they’re indicators of regulatory balance, the body’s way of keeping itself in check.

Without touch, the body loses one of its primary stress buffers. People deprived of touch show higher cortisol, weaker immune responses, elevated pain sensitivity, and greater incidence of anxiety and depression. In one study, patients receiving massage therapy showed increased levels of natural killer cells - crucial for immune defense. In another, premature infants who received gentle stroking gained weight faster and had fewer complications.

Touch is an immune intervention. A neuroendocrine regulator. A developmental requirement.

And it changes behavior. Children who grow up with more affectionate contact show better emotional regulation and less aggression. Adolescents who receive positive touch are more socially confident. Adults in touch-deprived relationships report higher stress and lower satisfaction. In every stage of life, touch functions as both a physiological stabilizer and a social signal.

Its absence is not neutral.

Cultural Calibration

Not all societies touch equally. Anthropologists have long classified cultures as “contact” and “non-contact” based on norms of proximity and touch. Latin America, Southern Europe, the Middle East – these are high-touch zones. Northern Europe, East Asia, the Anglosphere – lower-touch.

A study by Dr. Tiffany Field of the Touch Research Institute observed teens in Paris and Miami hanging out with friends. The French teens touched each other—playful pushes, shoulder nudges, light embraces—nearly 180 times in an hour. The Americans? Less than 20. And with far more instances of verbal aggression.

But the binary distinction is too simple for our present moment. Globalization and smartphones are flattening cultural differences. A Parisian couple might touch less than their grandparents did. A Seoul teenager might spend more time on Discord than with their friends. Norms migrate. Screens standardize. The result? Touch levels are dropping globally.

And the gender divide complicates things further. For all the progress in gender roles, physical affection still maps along heavily gendered expectations. Women may feel freer to initiate platonic touch – a hug, a cheek kiss, a comforting hand. Men often don’t. Fear of misinterpretation, internalized messages about masculinity, lack of modeling. For many men, touch is either sexual or violent – or absent.

So men go untouched. Unless in a relationship. Or on a team. Or drunk at a bar.

Even there, they may flinch.

When Touch Vanishes

You can now hire a professional cuddler in cities from Portland to Tokyo. They’re not therapists, not sex workers - just people who’ll lie beside you and offer human contact, by the hour. Some clients want to be held. Others just want someone nearby. There are group versions too - cuddle parties, complete with ground rules, consent workshops, and waivers. Everyone stays clothed. The atmosphere is equal parts self-help workshop and awkward sleepover.

These services provoke ridicule. But their existence says something profound: in a society that has decoupled touch from everyday interaction, people will pay for what used to be ambient.

There are other proxies: weighted blankets simulate pressure, hugging pillows offer plush surrogates and animal therapy uses dogs and cats as mammalian intermediaries. Some startups are developing robots that mimic the tactile feedback of human touch. You can even buy a robotic pillow that “breathes” as you cuddle it.

No, it’s not the same.

But is it enough to stave off the worst of the deficit?

Think of the Children

Babies who are held more frequently inhabit a different world than those who are not. They cry less, as if their fundamental trust in existence has been affirmed. They gain weight with greater ease, their bodies seemingly more willing to embrace life itself. Years later, when tested, these children demonstrate higher cognitive abilities - as though love, administered through touch, had literally made them smarter.

The inverse truth is equally telling and more troubling. When touch is absent or insufficient, we see the human spirit begin to fray. Emotional regulation becomes elusive. The capacity to form secure attachments - a fundamental skill on which all relationships depend - falters. Even the ability to manage stress diminishes, leaving these children more fragile in a world that demands resilience.

Our deepest strength comes from our willingness to be vulnerable with one another, skin to skin, heart to heart.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ It has nothing to do with isolation or self-sufficiency.

In the infamous Romanian orphanage studies, Children raised without consistent physical affection - even when fed and clothed - showed developmental delays, stunted growth, and severe emotional impairment. Some literally failed to thrive.

The lesson: you can survive without touch, but you will not flourish.

Romania’s Abandoned Children: The Effects of Early Profound Psychosocial Deprivation on the Course of Human Development - PMC

Understanding the impact that early psychosocial neglect has on the course of human development has implications for the millions of children around the world who are living in contexts of adversity. In the US, approximately 76% of cases reported to…

NCBI home page

How many children today are raised in touch-deficient contexts? Parents work long hours. Screens distract. Schools enforce no-contact rules. The cultural climate, wary of overstepping, leans toward caution. Some children grow up with plenty of words, plenty of toys, plenty of screen-based attention – and very little physical warmth.

It is not a small loss.

Final Contact

We like to think of ourselves as modern, advanced, "post-everything." But the body never got the memo. It still operates on ancient circuitry. It still yearns for presence, warmth, and the brief, anchoring pressure of another person’s hand.

Touch is not a luxury. It’s not decoration. It’s a foundation. And like any foundation, you can neglect it only so long, until the cracks begin to show.

We prize independence, we reward abstraction, and we sell connection as a subscription service. We know how to signal approval with a like, how to express sympathy with an emoji. We’ve become virtuosos of mediated sentiment. But the human nervous system doesn’t speak in symbols. It speaks in sensation.

A society that forgets how to touch doesn’t just become a lonelier place. It becomes a colder one. More brittle. More suspicious. More prone to fracture under stress.

We won’t rebuild touch through policy or platforms. It doesn’t scale that way. It returns through practice. Through small, human acts that carry no transaction, no strategy—just a willingness to reach out. A hand on a shoulder. A held gaze. A hug that lasts a moment longer than necessary.

If we are, as some claim, entering an era of artificial intimacy, then the real intimacy—the embodied kind—must become a conscious choice.