"We all need the human touch..."

The pop song "Human Touch" by Rick Springfield, released in 1983, was the second single from Springfield's seventh album Living in Oz.  The song would eventually reach number 18 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States.  The song's lyrics talk about the isolation of modern life (kids in the 1980's were spending more time in front of video games, personal computers, and televisions) and the need for real connection.  Google's Gemini artificial intelligence app says that the song "...contrasts technological detachment with the essential, vulnerable act of genuine human interaction and love...the song highlights how we build "prison cells" but need someone to break through, emphasizing that despite feeling "cool and calculated," we crave that physical and emotional closeness."  The American music magazine Cashbox emphasized the irony of using synthesizers and drum machines in a song that rails "against the impersonal coldness of computerized society."  

Ironically, I used AI to write about the meaning of the song's lyrics!  Did you catch that?  I've written a number of posts in the past year highlighting some of the drawbacks of technology (television, social media, mobile phones, and even artificial intelligence) and the role that technology has played in what former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy calls "an epidemic of loneliness" in today's society (for more on the "loneliness epidemic", please see my posts "The Loneliness Epidemic" and "Ubuntu").  For example, I've posted a lot about the role that television (see "Amusing Ourselves to Death"), technology (see "The Walkman Effect", "The Quiet Commute", and "Take a Break...") and social media (see "Familiarity breeds contempt...",  "Liberation", and "The truth about connection") have played in this epidemic of loneliness.  I have referenced the author and journalist Nicholas Carr a number of times in the past (see his most recent book, Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart).  I've mentioned Jonathan Haidt's book The Anxious Generation, which has received a lot of attention in the past year as well.  Haidt argues that a dramatic shift in childhood, largely driven by smartphones, social media, and changes in parenting styles, has led to a surge in anxiety, depression, and other mental health problems among young people.  

In my post, "Connections", I talked about Aaron Hurst and "The Six Points of Connection" that can help foster a sense of community and restore our trust in society today.  We need to get back as a society to emphasizing personal connections and the "human touch".  It's no mere coincidence that nonhuman primates (gorillas, chimpanzees, etc) spend close to 20% of their day on grooming behaviors, where one ape will groom another.  Grooming behaviors are an important aspect of the social behavior of nonhuman primates.  Touch builds the kinds of bonds that are important to surviving (and thriving) in the wild.

We humans too can benefit from fostering personal connection via touch.  Importantly, this was tested in an incredible study published in the journal Emotion in 2010 by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley (see "Tactile communication, cooperation, and performance: An ethological study of the NBA").  Researchers analyzed game film and collected key statistics from the 2008-2009 National Basketball Association (NBA) season.  They specifically looked at the tactile communication in one game played within the first 2 months of the season for all 30 teams, yielding data from 294 different players from all 30 NBA teams.  They specifically focused on 12 distinct types of touch that occurred when two or more players were in the midst of celebrating a positive play (scoring a basket, blocking a shot, etc) and included everything from fist bumps, high fives, chest bumps, and leaping shoulder bumps to half hugs and full hugs.  Early season touch positively predicted the team's performance during the full NBA regular season.  Players on winning teams fist bumped, high fived, chest bumped, and hugged more than players on losing teams.  These seemingly small forms of tactile communication significantly increased the cooperative workings of the team, which in turn translated to better performance.

Personal touch goes a long way towards establishing the bonds of human connection, and that's hard to do via a computer screen.  Bottom line, I do think that emphasizing the personal connection will help address some of the problems around trust, collaboration, and engagement that appear to be so widespread with today's workforce.  There's no question that technology is here to stay, but we can't let technology replace the need for personal connection.  Rick Springfield perhaps said it best, "We all need the human touch..."