Human Touch in a Digital World

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I was somewhere amid reading a cache of college freshman essays when I slowed and stuttered over these words: “My new AI Bestie.” I had assigned my students a 500-word process analysis essay on artificial intelligence in any form. Their choice. There was a smattering of papers on Google Maps and Siri, even one about an Apple Watch. As I expected, the majority of essays detailed the functions and use of ChatGPT.

What I did not anticipate was the “bestie” line in this particular piece, followed by more description of how this was not an isolated turn. Via social media, this student was introduced to the idea of forming both a personal confidante and professional counseling relationship with her ChatGPT. She described sharing problems, asking for advice on how to best manage her recent breakup and subsequent depression, as well as casual “check-ins” to chat about anything and nothing at all.

I was stunned.

“The AI Companion Who Cares”

There is no denying that AI is here and here to stay. What we are assessing in real time are the magnitude, force, and potential functions of this transmuting digital wave. Complicating our need to understand AI’s effect on individuals and societies is its continued light-speed evolution. Seemingly daily, new advances and applications are rolling out. From my student’s humble introduction to ChatGPT in this interpersonal matrix, we are now seeing the proliferation of digital “friend” sites like Replika and Character. “The AI Companion Who Cares” jumps off the center screen on Replika’s home page, with the subtitle, “Always here to listen and talk. Always on your side.”

I flashed from stunned to deeply alarmed.

At its best, AI is a strong, reliable current by which we can guide ourselves downstream to preferred destinations. Predominantly for the younger generations, it is a bomb, an eerily apt term surfers use for describing that “big wave” that gives the ultimate satisfaction.

But when, and by what criteria, do we see this wave and rightfully call it a tsunami? A recent study from Common Sense Media reports that 70 percent of teens have used AI companions, and half of them use these tools regularly. The deleterious mental health implications are substantial. These include the disruption of important psychological and social skills construction, the inevitable exacerbation of isolation, loneliness, and depression, and the entrenched specter of a new form of addiction.

A frightening proposition.

A Call to Creative Arms…and Hands

In my previous Psychology Today post, “You Don’t Need Permission to Be Creative,” I referenced divergent and convergent thought processes. In summary, divergent thinking involves the generation of creative ideas. Convergent thinking involves the synthesis of these novel ideas. To date, AI and other digital technologies operate in the limited land of synthesis, in convergent processes, even as they become increasingly intuitive. I’ll leave for another occasion the dystopian consideration that AI will one day invade the sacred home of divergent thinking. Indeed, I pray that the firewall will never be breached.

Alongside the elemental character of divergent thinking that separates humanity from the machine, there is another essential difference: touch. Humans are neurologically wired to require touch by other sentient beings, human and non. In the latest Psychology Today print edition (August 2025), Sebastian Ocklenburg writes about this necessary process in “The Healing Power of Touch: Novel insights on the mental health benefits of physical contact.” Ocklenburg cites a meta-analysis by German researchers at the Social Neuroscience Lab at Ruhr University Bochum. The consensus: touch is significant in facilitating good physical and mental health. In an intriguing contrast, researchers described the gains in physical well-being that individuals received from robotic massage. Notably, the positive mental health benefits these robotic masseuses provided were less effective.

Imagine a Time

Growing up in the ’70s, the options for non-sentient connections were limited to favored childhood stuffed animals, pet rocks, and imaginary friends. The imaginary friend experience was the exclusive purview of the very young, while pet rocks had their brief 15 minutes of fad-fame for the masses. Moving into the teen years, a number of my friends held fast to their favored stuffed animals, if in a more private manner. I never engaged in any of these sanctioned relationships. I did, however, spend countless hours alone in my backyard playing real basketball with imaginary opponents, complete with graceful choreography and mixes of victories and defeats.

This activity was my go-to in good times and bad, whether I was feeling alone and bereft or connected and on top of the world. The physicality calmed and complemented me. The soft, tacky ply of the leather ball in my sweaty hands. The conversation between the sun and the light breeze on my face and forearms. The tinny tunes trailing out from my transistor radio. This rapid heart rate experience cleared my mind and opened a space for me to explore my loss or celebration. Often, it moved me to reach out to others in search of solace and connection.

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Loneliness doesn’t ebb at the borders of any time or generation. Nor does the need for us to engage all of our senses in separate and shared synergy.

The active engagement of imagination is the qualitative difference between these earlier experiences and today's burgeoning AI companion trend. When we delve into the imaginative process, all sorts of neural fireworks explode. Divergent and convergent thought processes light and arc across our brains’ skies. This is not to suggest a complete absence of cognitive engagement when interfacing with AI. It needs to be noted, however, that abdicating some degree of our mental calisthenics to AI will not serve us well over time.

Everything Old Is New Again

Oh, the irony of the algorithmic phone scroll: Following my panic after I read my student’s AI essay, I returned to my smartphone’s newsfeed. There, I landed on a few anecdotal sites that described the trend of Millennials and Gen Zers migrating towards the unplugged activities of the older generations. Things like board games, community gardens, fishing, and vinyl records.

Reading these reports about the shift to broader, collective sensory experiences that are essential to our psychological well-being replenishes my hope for humanity. No, we won’t eradicate the AI footprint. That should never be the goal. AI has too much constructive value for our world. We just need to redouble our efforts to understand the benefits and limitations of its place in our lives.