Tracking changes in touch desire and touch avoidance before and after the COVID-19 outbreak

Abstract

Touch is essential for social interactions, environmental exploration, and wellbeing. However, human touch behaviour has been greatly restricted by COVID-19 prevention measures, and this is expected to impact people’s attitude toward touch. Here we examined the transition of people’s touch attitudes (touch desire, avoidance, and awareness) before and after the COVID-19 outbreak, using data from millions of public Twitter posts over an eight-year span. We found that people's desire for touching the human body and pet animals increased significantly after the COVID-19 outbreak and remained high afterward. In contrast, the avoidance and the awareness of touching everyday objects increased immediately after the outbreak but gradually returned to the pre-COVID-19 levels. Our findings highlight the sign of “skin hunger”, a public health crisis due to social distancing, and call attention to the trend that people are becoming less aware of infection control as COVID-19 persists.