Touch Me If You Can
Reclaiming Physicality in a Screen-Obsessed Era
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Introduction
Have you ever wondered why every bit of information and experience feels so fleeting? In the digital world, overwhelm does not come only from the rush of data we face these days. There is another factor making us feel a loss of experience within ourselves: tactility.
Over the last fifteen years, big tech convinced us that fewer buttons, knobs, and switches would turbocharge innovation and improve our lives. In reality, we ended up with subscription fatigue, intrusive ads, and scattered attention. By trading touch for convenience, we surrendered more than physical controls. We gave up our embodied participation in daily life. Surfaces grew glassy and frictionless. Yet friction is what gives us grip. It reveals the contours of our experience and the texture of time.
In the paragraphs ahead we’ll dive into three pathways to recover tactility:
Rediscovering analog rituals, from handwritten letters to printed photographs, that anchor our sense of time.
Reintegrating legacy technologies that better support sustained attention.
Embedding sensory-rich practices like gardening or woodworking to rebuild the embodied connection we’ve lost.
Analog Rituals
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the French philosopher, offered a vital insight to the 21st century: we inhabit the worlds we create. When we choose the textures of our surroundings, we unlock new ways of being. In a realm ruled by glass and pixels, we drift into detachment. We are prone to skim, scroll, or leap from fragment to fragment. Yet this state is not inevitable. It is a habitat we have consented to, and it is one we can abandon.
When we step into an analog domain, we clutch a pen in our hand. We feel paper beneath our fingertips. We glimpse photographs lined up on a shelf. We enter a space defined by weight, resistance, and duration. In this realm, moments gather instead of vanishing. That is why you recall writing letters but not typing texts. That is why you remember the paper-mâché sculpture you made at camp but forget your last Instagram post. The tactile delivers a depth of engagement the screen cannot match.
Analog rituals become moments of respite amid the ceaseless flood of information. Sitting in quiet meditation in your living room, taking unhurried walks through a green park, or molding small castles from plastiline create space for our attention to reset. We must choose them and be consistent. Over time, they create attachment to peace and tranquility. In my personal experience, making time for these activities at the beginning and end of the day is the easiest way to restore my attention. Here are some of the best ideas I’ve done or come across:
📓 Keep a physical notebook by your bed for reflections.
🗓️ Use a wall calendar or analog planner to track your week instead of relying solely on digital reminders.
🚶♂️ Take a weekly walk without headphones. Gen Z seems to be into this a lot.
🧘♀️ Begin and end each day with a short analog ritual like stretching or lighting a candle.
Recovering old technologies
Wendell Berry, the poet and farmer, once wrote that “the past is our definition.” While most of us consider older technologies as obsolete, they are repositories of rhythm, attention, and care. They slow the pace, demand presence, and resist the disposability baked into modern design. The vinyl player, old GPS unit, or walkies talkies help us see beyond immediacy and into effort.
Consider the difference between a landline phone and a smartphone. A landline anchors you to a physical space, encourages focused dialogue, and offers no temptation to check headlines mid-conversation. A smartphone, by contrast, can pull you into a cascade of distractions with a single tap. Or take the mechanical watch: it must be wound, it marks time with quiet precision, and it resists the multitasking demands of smartwatches. These tools aren’t flawless or immune to obsolescence. Some, like the word processor, needed thoughtful updates to remain usable. But they excel at one thing we’re starving for: sustained, embodied attention.
This is why I use a dumbphone. It doesn’t make life easier, but that’s the point. It introduces just enough friction to help me reclaim time and attention elsewhere. Smartphones trained my brain to chase information I didn’t need. In 2019, I chose calm over overload, and for the past five and a half years, that choice has quietly reshaped my way of life. It took nearly three years to recover from the withdrawals to be at peace with not knowing everything with a quick search. As I near my 30th year, I’m not looking to speed up. I’m looking forward to the next fifty years marked by simplicity, presence, and a slower, steadier rhythm.
A friend of mine recently revived her old CD Walkman and began to not just listen, but engage. She started burning curated mixes like the ones we made in the early 2000s, albums chosen for mood, memory, and meaning. The tactile experience reminded her that old tech has purpose, and that it invites presence to a distracted life. So I invite you to try the old. Replace one piece of your digital routine with something analog, and see what texture returns.
Embedding sensory-rich practices
Would you get a massage from an AI robot? Yeah… me neither. It’s not that it wouldn’t be more precise or statistically effective. Maybe, it would hit every pressure point with algorithmic perfection. But that’s not the point. What we crave in moments of care isn’t just accuracy, it’s connection. It’s the warmth of human hands, the subtle feedback loop of breath and tension, the shared silence that makes the experience feel alive.
Choosing sensory practices, whether in your backyard or deep in the wild, helps us recover the natural rhythm of life. Lions aren’t always hunting; they rest, stretch, and observe. We too were wired for cycles of movement and stillness. Though modern life urges us to go, go, go, we carry ancient clocks for food, rest, and quiet. Nature, in its infinite vastness, helps us reconnect to those rhythms. Next time you are at the beach, notice the waves crashing and ponder about where they came from. If you find out, let me know.
As our culture continues to obsess with optimization, choosing a natural rhythm is a quiet act of resistance. Walter Brueggemann writes, “In our own contemporary context of the rat race of anxiety, the celebration of Sabbath [rest] is an act of both resistance and alternative. It is resistance because it is a visible insistence that our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodity goods.” It’s saying: I am not a machine, and I don’t want my healing to feel like maintenance. I want it to feel like life.
Conclusion
Tactility is a remedy. As we continue towards a world increasingly flattened by screens and streamlined by algorithms, we can fight back. We can reclaim the contours of experience, the slowness of attention, and the depth of connection. It’s time for us to introduce textures remind us that we are not just minds consuming data. We are bodies inhabiting time. To choose tactility is to choose presence. And in doing so, we begin to inhabit a world that feels whole again.
Very well-articulated article. Older technologies introduced constraints that actually deepened our cognition and made our creations more meaningful, rather than automatic. Take, for example, the analogue camera versus the digital one. With analogue cameras, a reel could hold only 36 photos, none of which could be deleted or edited. That limitation encouraged us to be fully present and capture only the moments that truly mattered. The anticipation of getting the photos developed, followed by carefully placing them in physical albums, turned them into treasures for a lifetime. Today, with digital cameras, we only capture endlessly, without living in the moment.
Great, thought-provoking article. Thank you! I have been looking into making the switch to a “dumb phone” and this article convinced me to make the leap.