Tech Against Skin Hunger
Phones made out of human “flesh”
“Skin hunger” is phenomenon that stems from the natural, biological craving for human touch.
Studies show that babies who do not have regular human contact can actually stop growing and even die, depending on how long they are cut off from touch. From age zero to five, if a developing child does not receive enough stimulation, they will never grow to their full capacity. While the ethics of these types of experiments are questionable, they have clearly demonstrated a very real, innate need for human touch.
This is actually why babies in neonatal intensive care departments are placed on their parent’s exposed chest. In fact, children who are shown more skin-to-skin touch when they are young are less likely to be violent or get involved in crime when they get older.
But touch is still important even when we grow up. In older kids diagnosed with ADHD, massage sessions were shown to decrease their fidgeting habits and the kids claimed to feel more relaxed overall. People struggling with unhealthy cravings or addictions can also use massage to suppress the impulse to smoke.
Touch isn’t just a pleasant distraction from day-to-day anxiety either — it’s a biological reaction that literally decreases your stress levels. From a scientific standpoint, when a person is touched, the contact activates pressure sensors underneath your skin, sending messages to a special nerve in your brain called the vagus. The increased vagal activity causes your nervous system to slow down. As a result, your heart rate and blood pressure will decrease and your brain waves also show a state of relaxation. At the same time, hormones associated with stress, such as cortisol, decrease.
Interestingly, because of the lowered levels of cortisol, human touch is effective in helping patients with HIV or cancer. Cortisol breaks down white blood cells that attack foreign bodies. When cortisol levels are too high, the cells are prevented from fighting these types of viruses. With human touch, we can lower cortisol levels and, therefore, naturally increase these cells.
Today, most tech interfaces are rather cold. But, acknowledging the importance of skin hunger, the Skin-On project takes a unique approach to make these interfaces more human through skin.
Skin-On works as a skin-like wrap, or cover, around your mobile device. The layer of skin is made out of silicone to imitate real skin’s texture and malleability. Additional silicone can be added so that the mold reaches a desired fatness. Similarly, paint and make up can change the skin to a desired coloring.
Beneath this top layer is a perpendicular grid which forms a pane of electrodes. These electrodes are later connected to a hardware sensing platform that senses the touches from the user.
This allows the “skin” to have human like response to different gestures, like poking, prodding, pinching, and tickling. The skin can also react to the user’s emotions. For example, very strong or sudden pressure symbolizes anger while careful stroking represents comfort.
Visually, Skin-On might look a bit startling or even creepy at your first glance:
Skin-On pushes the boundary of how far we should take the challenge of making technology more “human.” Artificial skin isn’t the same as human skin but it may bring comfort to some when the real thing isn’t available. So, while many find a skin-covered phone disturbing now, Skin-On and similar products might one day be the norm.
Kale, Sirin. “Skin Hunger Helps Explain Your Desperate Longing for Human Touch.” WIRED UK, WIRED UK, 29 Apr. 2020, www.wired.co.uk/article/skin-hunger-coronavirus-human-touch.
McDonald, Hannah. “This Phone Case Made of Artificial Human Skin Is Designed to Do More Than Creep People Out.” Mental Floss, Mental Floss, 24 Oct. 2019, www.mentalfloss.com/article/604791/phone-case-of-artificial-human-skin.
“Skin-to-Skin Contact and the Benefit of Human Touch.” MedBroadcast, MedBroadcast, www.medbroadcast.com/channel/mental-health/stress/skin-to-skin-contact-and-the-benefit-of-human-touch.
Szalavitz, Maia. “Touching Empathy.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/born-love/201003/touching-empathy.
Teyssier, Marc. “Artificial Skin for Mobile Devices.” Marc Teyssier, marcteyssier.com/projects/skin-on/.
