Human Touch in the Age of AI: Why we still need physical connection

Ashley Montagu quote

“Touch is a language of its own with a very large vocabulary. Through touch we can communicate what cannot be spoken, for it is the true voice of feeling.”

-Ashley Montagu, Touching, 1971

There is something almost prophetic about reading these words today.

Ashley Montagu wrote them long before smartphones, social media, remote working, artificial intelligence or virtual assistants became part of everyday life.

Today, I can send a message to someone on another continent almost instantly. I can hold a video meeting without leaving my home. Artificial intelligence can help me research, organise, translate, write and solve problems within seconds. Our ability to communicate has become extraordinary.

And yet there is one important distinction we perhaps need to talk about more often:

communication is not necessarily the same as human connection. And connection is not always the same as contact.

We are becoming more digitally connected

— but increasingly disembodied

Think about an ordinary day.

You may wake up and check your phone before speaking to anyone.

You answer emails.

You work on a laptop.

You order food from an app.

You send messages.

You scroll through photographs of people you know.

You may even have meaningful conversations without physically sharing a room with another person. None of this is inherently bad.

Technology has created enormous opportunities. For people living alone, working remotely, travelling or separated from family, digital communication can be incredibly valuable.

Research even suggests that phone and video communication can help reduce feelings of loneliness in some circumstances.

So the point is not that we should reject technology. It is that our bodies still exist outside the screen. We are not purely cognitive beings exchanging information. We are biological, sensory and relational beings. And touch is part of that biology.

Human touch is information in the age of AI

When we think about human touch in the Age of AI, we often think simply of pressure being applied to the skin.

But our nervous system is constantly interpreting touch.

• Where is it happening?

• How strong is it?

• Is it expected?

• Is it safe?

• Who is touching us?

• What does that touch mean?

A handshake, a hug, a parent holding a child's hand and a massage therapist applying deliberate pressure to tense tissue may all involve skin-to-skin or physical contact, yet they are completely different experiences.Touch therefore contains information.

It communicates intention, boundaries, reassurance, proximity and sometimes emotion without requiring language.

Research on affective touch has identified specialised sensory pathways involved particularly in slow, gentle interpersonal touch, helping scientists understand why certain forms of touch can have an emotional as well as a purely mechanical quality.

Perhaps Montagu was closer to modern neuroscience than he realised when he described touch as having its own vocabulary.

What does research actually tell us about touch?

One of the most significant recent pieces of research was published in Nature Human Behaviour in 2024.

Researchers analysed 85 studies involving adults and another 52 studies involving newborn babies. Overall, touch interventions produced measurable benefits for both groups.

Among adults, the researchers found particularly meaningful effects for:

• pain reduction;

• symptoms associated with anxiety;

• depressive feelings;

• and several other measures of physical and psychological well-being.

Interestingly, the researchers also compared touch delivered by humans with touch delivered through objects or robotic interventions.

Physical health effects were relatively comparable in some measures, but human touch produced greater mental-health benefits than touch delivered by objects or robots.

That finding becomes fascinating when we consider where technology is heading.

• Robotics may increasingly imitate pressure.

• Artificial intelligence may imitate conversation.

• Virtual reality may simulate presence.

But simulation and human experience are not necessarily interchangeable.

Can technology recreate human touch?

We are already trying and kinda suceeding!

Researchers have developed haptic devices, wearable technologies and robotic systems designed to recreate aspects of touch. There may be excellent uses for these technologies, particularly in healthcare, rehabilitation and situations where human contact is impossible.

But current research also illustrates their limitations.

A 2023 study compared normal online communication with a simulated virtual touch during video conversations. The conversations themselves reduced loneliness scores, but adding simulated touch did not produce an additional effect. The researchers also found that people in relationships with little physical touch reported loneliness levels more similar to single participants than people in relationships characterised by frequent touch.

That does not mean a device can never create a meaningful tactile experience.

Technology will undoubtedly improve. But it does raise an interesting question:

Are humans seeking pressure on the skin—or are we seeking another human being behind that pressure?

Sometimes those are two different needs.

The difference between being touched and being attended to

This distinction matters enormously in massage therapy. Massage is often marketed according to techniques:

• Deep Tissue.

• Swedish massage.

• Trigger Point Therapy.

• Sports massage.

• Therapeutic massage.

And technique is important. Anatomical knowledge matters. Pressure matters.

Clinical reasoning matters.

But after many years working directly with people, I believe something else matters alongside technique: attention.

When I place my hands on a client's shoulders, I am not simply applying a predetermined movement. I am gathering information.

• Is one side more guarded?

• How does the tissue respond?

• Does the person unconsciously hold their breath when pressure increases?

• Do they relax when the pace slows?

• Does their body seem to need more movement today—or less?

Professional therapeutic touch involves an ongoing conversation between practitioner and client, even when very few words are spoken. That is one reason two massages using exactly the same technique may feel completely different. The technique may be identical.

The quality of attention may not be.

Touch and the feeling of social safety

Touch must always be appropriate, consensual and wanted. Not everyone experiences touch as comforting. Past experiences, trauma, neurodivergence, cultural expectations, sensory sensitivities and personal preferences can all influence how physical contact is perceived. More touch is therefore not automatically better. Good therapeutic touch respects boundaries. The person receiving it should feel that they remain in control.

Within that context, however, research suggests that gentle affective touch may have an important social-regulatory role.

One experimental study involving 84 participants found that slow, gentle touch reduced some of the feelings of social exclusion created experimentally by a computer-based rejection task.

A developing area of medicine and research

The clinical relevance of touch is receiving increasing attention.

A 2024 review published in Frontiers in Psychiatry explored the idea of “touch medicine” and examined how emerging research on touch may eventually inform clinical practice, including work relating to affective disorders.

The authors discuss possible mechanisms involving interoception, stress regulation, psychological processes and neuroendocrine pathways, while also acknowledging that the mechanisms are still being investigated.

This is an important distinction. Science is increasingly interested in touch. But that does not mean every mechanism has already been explained. For practitioners, curiosity should always sit alongside scientific humility.

Why this matters in the Age of AI

Artificial intelligence is going to become more present in our lives, not less.

Personally, I believe the healthiest response is not to fear that development.

• AI can be enormously useful.

• It can increase access to information.

• It can reduce repetitive work.

• It can assist education.

• It can help us communicate across languages and distances.

But perhaps the rise of artificial intelligence should also encourage us to become clearer about the things that remain profoundly human.

• Presence.

• Relationship.

• Embodied experience.

• Eye contact.

• Shared silence.

• Movement.

• Touch.

AI can explain relaxation.

It cannot experience your shoulder gradually softening beneath its hand.

It can describe pain.

It cannot palpate an area and adapt its pressure moment by moment to your response.

It can generate compassionate words.

But words and physical presence are different forms of communication.

The future does not have to be technology versus humanity.

Perhaps the healthier future is technology supporting our lives while we deliberately protect the experiences that make those lives human.

Massage may become more relevant, Not Less

People sometimes think of massage as something old-fashioned in a rapidly advancing healthcare and technology landscape.

I see almost the opposite.

The more time we spend sitting, travelling, staring at screens, working remotely and interacting digitally, the more valuable intentional physical experiences may become.

A massage session creates something increasingly unusual in modern life.

For an hour, there may be:

• no notifications;

• no scrolling;

• no requirement to answer;

• no productivity target;

• no algorithm competing for attention.

Instead, there is a body, another human being and a period of focused care.

Sometimes massage addresses muscular tension. Sometimes it supports recovery.

Sometimes somebody simply realises halfway through the treatment:

“I haven't properly relaxed in weeks.”

Those moments matter too.

Perhaps touch really is a language

Montagu's quote has stayed with me because it describes something I repeatedly experience in my work.

• Bodies communicate.

• Sometimes shoulders communicate exhaustion.

• A clenched jaw communicates effort.

• A guarded abdomen communicates discomfort.

• A long exhalation communicates that something has finally softened.

Of course, therapists should never invent psychological meanings for physical tension or assume that a particular muscle tells us somebody's emotional history.

But we can listen carefully to what the body is showing us in the present moment.

And sometimes the most respectful response does not require another explanation.

It requires skilled hands, appropriate boundaries and genuine human presence.

A final thought

Artificial intelligence may become exceptionally good at speaking our language.

But humans have always communicated through more than words.

• Through expression.

• Through movement.

• Through proximity.

• Through silence.

• And through touch.

Technology will continue to change the world around us. Perhaps one of the challenges ahead will be remembering that our bodies have not suddenly become obsolete simply because our technology has become more intelligent.

• We are still physical beings.

• We still regulate ourselves partly through relationships.

• We still respond to presence.

• And appropriate, respectful human touch remains one of the oldest forms of communication we have.

In the era of artificial intelligence, protecting genuine human connection may become not less important — but more.

Love & Light,

Hajnalka

Disclaimer:

This article discusses general wellbeing research and is not intended to suggest that massage or touch replaces medical or psychological treatment.