When was the last time that you touched or hugged someone outside of your friends, family, or romantic relationship? And I don’t mean accidentally touching someone.
As for myself, I have touched one person in the past month, and it was the delivery guy. I touched his hand by accident when he was handing the pizza to me.
The sense of touch is the first one that we develop in the womb when we are little embryos. How can something so natural and instinctual to babies become so weird and shameful in adulthood?
“Of course we are moving away from touch!” exclaims Francis McGlone, a professor in neuroscience at Liverpool John Moores University and a leader in the field of affective touch.
“We have demonized touch to a level at which it sparks off hysterical responses, it sparks off legislative processes, and this lack of touch is not good for mental health.”
He has even discovered that some teachers even ask their students to stick on a plaster themselves because they don’t want to touch them and risk getting infected.
“We seem to have been creating a touch-averse world,” he says. “It’s time to recover the social power of touch.”
People from everywhere around the world avoid touching other people. That’s why a touch industry is operating through US, Australia, and Europe, where professional cuddlers offer free hugs to random people.
Human beings need touch. We love touch. That’s why we buy a million products from soft-touch pillows to impeccable touch face creams. Touch is something that we need to be happy because it is a natural increaser of serotonin. Plus, it provides intimacy and a sense of companionship and understanding between two individuals. It’s what makes us human.
Yet, we don’t see people touching every day.
Let’s change that! Let’s be closer to each other. Who’s in?
Image: Nadia
