“Our longing for human touch is wired into our bodies and without it, the “skin hunger” or touch deprivation can hit us hard.”
This article is by Varsha Rani, published in Vice Magazine. It begins:
“For a person like me who’s not really fond of technology and the new trends people are obsessed with these days to feel connected with their friends, I constantly keep thinking about how things are going to be once this is over.
Apart from the many things I look forward to—travel, going back to college, going out to eat—a simple thing I once took for granted and now am waiting for is just hugging the people I love. High-fiving my little cousin, putting my arm around my friend, mock-punching the sibling.
For a lot of us, our skin is the means through which we intuit the energies of others, in a way FaceTiming or calls could never do. We also want to comfort and be comforted through our skin and when this hasn’t happened in months, one of our most used senses begins to starve.
‘Skin hunger’ or touch deprivation occurs when a person experiences little to no touch from other living things. Often, this isn’t considered a real problem but studies have found that they can have some serious and long-lasting effects. Touch is pretty much a fundamental mode of human communication. Be it a mother cradling her baby, lovers intertwining their fingers, or best friends hugging each other—a lot of how we connect with other human beings is born out of touch. This is also why prisoners in solitary confinement have been reported of as craving human touch almost as much as liberty …”
You can read more from here.
