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

Touch is essential for social interactions, environmental exploration, and wellbeing. However, human touch behavior 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 desire and touch avoidance 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 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.