One of the narratives that’s emerged during the COVID-19 crisis tells us that social distancing isn’t a big deal. We thought we had to be physically present at work, in school, and with our friends, the story goes, but have discovered ways to interact over the distance, using the power of digital media.
Behind this narrative of resilience and easy adaptation, there’s a gathering shadow of a darker experience. In many places, fewer than half of students are logging on to their digital classrooms, even more are attending sparsely, and even those who are attending school online are struggling with a starkly degraded educational experience. Digital infrastructure, despite decades of development, still isn’t ready to support a world of remote work. Glitches and security lapses abound, and professional connections are coming undone as a result, even for those people who still have work. In the United States alone, 22 million people have lost their jobs,
Despite the happy talk about the development of virtual communities, a world with few opportunities for connection anywhere but online is making people increasingly miserable. A frantic pace of Zoom video conferences isn’t holding off the desperate feeling of isolation, a “perfect storm of psychological trauma“. Already, calls to suicide hotlines have gone up by 800 percent since the beginning of the crisis, and there’s no end in sight.
The world is discovering the profound emotional limitations of online social networks. No matter how much we communicate online, we’re not truly staying in touch.
Staying in touch, after all, requires touch. We have a physiological need for physical touch that no smartphone app or streaming service can provide. In the absence of face-to-face interaction with other human beings, people around the world are feeling a growing ache. Psychologists call this emotion skin hunger.
Human-to-human physical touch protects us from the damage caused by stress, but now, as the entire world is suffering from an unprecedented scale of economic, medical, and social stress, huge numbers of people are suffering from a prolonged deprivation from touch. No sex, no kisses, no hugs. Not even a reassuring hand on the shoulder or pat on the back.
When we’re skin hungry, we feel restless and hopeless, urgently itching without hope for a scratch. We are chronically uncomforted, alone, abandoned, no matter how many voices we hear or faces we see.
The novelty of remote dance parties quickly breaks down into a depressing reality: We remain apart, unable to truly dance and look at other dancers on a little screen at the same time. There’s no heat, no bumping of bodies
We’re learning the hard way that human beings are much more than just biological computers. We are throbbing, pulsing bodies, aching for each other, and we can’t rationally talk ourselves down from the urge to break the social distance.
It isn’t a logical problem we’re facing, but a hormonal one, and we can only solve the problem by throwing ourselves into the thick of it, not by standing back and thinking about it.
Skin hunger teaches us that there are some things that you have to hold in order to grasp what they’re really about.
