To touch your face is to be human, telling people not to achieves very little

The new coronavirus (Covid-19) threat is getting us educated about hand hygiene.

Washing hands is the most important tool to prevent spread of the new virus, which at this point has no known treatment or vaccine. And although we’ve been washing hands since before preschool a refresher is in order: Hands should be washed frequently, with water and soap, and for at least 20 seconds, especially before eating, after using the bathroom, after blowing your nose and after touching other people and the places they’ve touched.

The other piece of hygiene advice commonly dispensed: Don’t touch your face.

Good advice, no doubt, as our hands, our tool for interacting with the world and its microbes, can introduce microorganism right into our body.

Respiratory infections, such as the flu, the common cold – and also probably Covid-19 – spread through droplets that infected people spread in the air in their close proximity. But you can also transfer microorganisms directly into your eyes, mouth and nose by your own hands, hands that were in touch with microbes. And it’s not just viral respiratory infections that spread this way: Bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus live peacefully in the noses of up to a quarter of the population, and can move from there to infect other parts of their own body and the bodies of other people.

How hard could it be?

Now that you’ve been told to stop touching your face, will anything change?

What helped me realize the difficulty of following this directive is how many times my face stings after cutting hot peppers – I use jalapeños and other spicy peppers often, and although I try very hard to not touch my face, I feel the burn all too often.

That’s because to touch your face is to be human.

We don’t mean to touch our face, but to touch your face is a human trait, it’s a subconscious action, and much like intermittently changing our posture or scratching an itch, it’s hard to stop.

Touching our face is a trait we share with gorillas, orangutans and chimpanzees, who touch their face as often as we do, although we humans have a chin-touching predilection unique to us.

A study in the American Journal of Infection Control observed the face-touching behavior of medical students in Australia, and found that they did so on average 23 times an hour. Medical students, who are far more aware than the general population, were touching their mouth 4 times an hour on average, their nose 3. 

A recent study of face touching found on average about 6 such incidents in 14 minutes. Another study observing Japanese and British people for 10 minutes at a time finds that all groups touched their face frequently – in 10 minutes of being observed doing nothing British people touched their face more than 8 times – although, interestingly, British people touch their chin more frequently, whereas Japanese people touched their nose and eyes more.

Methods for breaking the hand-to-face cycle include keeping your hands busy, covering your hands with gloves and thinking about it.

Thinking about it works for a short while. Try it and see how long you last.

If you have hair falling into your face putting your hair up in a ponytail can reduce your face touching. If you wear glasses you’ll touch your face more, but can you see without your glasses?

Touching your face is more than a habit, it really is natural human behavior, and as such, hard to control for long. Once you’re not concentrating on not touching your face, your hands will occasionally find their way to your favorite spot again.

Don’t touch your face with contaminated hands

Rather than emphasizing the do-not-touch-your-face directive, we should alert people to the fact that they do touch their face, and therefore should be practicing excellent hand hygiene.

Which brings us back to washing your hands. Yes, that’s the most important thing. 

Hand washing is in our control, and it’s contaminated hands we’re most worried about.

The “don’t touch your face” directive that we can better follow is don’t touch your face with contaminated hands.

Dr. Ayala