When it comes to reaching out and touching another human, the #MeToo movement and Covid-19 have created a perfect storm of mistrust and fear.

There’s probably nowhere where this is more intensely apparent than in schools. Ultimately, this is all a question of risk - touching other people comes with the risk of offence, the risk of violation, the risk of infection.

But the risk of installing a fear of touch in our young people might be the most dangerous of all.

Coronavirus: Restricting the power of touch

The problem is, touch is both powerful and complicated. For example, a fascinating study from 2006 showed that if you hold someone’s hand while in a brain scanner your anxiety when faced with the threat of pain is significantly reduced.

All the participants in this study were married women, each holding their husband’s hand. The stronger their relationship, as reported by the wives, the stronger the calming effect was from the touch of their husband’s hand.

What this shows is that, while touch is fundamentally a physical thing - starting with a range of receptors for heat, cold, pain, itch, vibration, pressure or texture - it also comes with an emotional response.

In fact, this emotional element of touch is distinct enough to be processed in a separate region of the brain called the posterior insular cortex.

This is why the touch of a partner’s hand is not simply a fact that you notice - it’s an experience that is calming. But its calming effect is also based on trust, which is learned over time.

Physical, emotional, learned…there’s a lot going on in each of these areas and yet all three are processed simultaneously during a behaviour as apparently simple as holding someone’s hand. So, touch is complicated.

Building relationships

And there are no shortcuts to achieving the long-term trusting relationships that resulted in the positive effect of touch from the hand-holding study.

Before you get there, there are the complexities of the first touch of someone’s hand, the first hug, the first kiss, and so on.

Learning these complexities is something like learning a language - the language of touch.

As teachers, we can help with some of the rules of grammar and syntax, but we can’t pretend that the language of touch is easy to learn.

There will be misunderstandings, mispronunciations, words and phrases that mean different things to different people - something those of us in international settings know all too well.  

All the time, the language of touch is constantly shifting and evolving across countries and cultures.

Given how complicated it all is, isn’t it strange to outlaw mistakes in the learning of touch, while encouraging learning from mistakes in academia?

Worse still is to turn all the mistakes of flirtatious and sexual touch into a narrative of abuser/harasser and victim.

Dangerous developments

What this is likely to do is encourage young people to give up on the risks of real-life touch and disappear behind their screens into the “safe” world of virtual touch.

In the case of young males, this may be through pornography, where the language they’re learning is full of obscenities - ways of touching that are designed to degrade and dehumanise women.

We must not make that the easier option for boys, not least because it turns into the least safe option for the girls they go on to interact with.

Some might argue that the “safe” route would be for both parties to establish explicit verbal consent at each new stage of touch.

But even if this were desirable, it would not be fool-proof - how do you know if the consenting partner is not feeling pressured?

And how do you know that you’re ready for the next stage if you’ve never been touched like that before?

But that doesn’t we mean we can ignore this issue - its implications run deep.

The bedrock of mental wellbeing

Schools, and everyone invested in the wellbeing of young people, have to be honest and accept that touch is often a messy business.

Mistakes are pretty much inevitable. And now, with Covid-19, serious infection is always possible.

But this just makes it all the more important that we do all we can to minimise the fear of making these mistakes and taking these risks.

As teachers, we have to be able to use the language of touch to support and comfort the young people in our care, and to model appropriate use of touch so that they can learn from us.

And we must keep in mind that the most well-meaning, zero-tolerance approach to mistakes in touch between young people may simply result in them growing up into touch-illiterate adults.

This should concern us all because the reason touch is so powerful is that, ultimately, it’s a physical manifestation of our connection with others. A hug can say things that words never can.

Holding someone’s hand, an arm around the shoulder or the most fleeting touch of the back can help someone face their fears or feel comforted in a way that is more powerful than any supportive text message.

And this connection with others, communicated so powerfully by touch, is one of the bedrocks of mental wellbeing.

Tomorrow’s edition of Tes (5 June) has an in-depth look at the importance of touch in the classroom and how teachers can ensure they use it correctly. Subscribe here to receive print and online editions each week.

Aidan Harvey-Craig is a psychology teacher and student counsellor at an international school in Malawi. His book, 18 Wellbeing Hacks for Students, is out in August. He tweets @psychologyhack