Are Handshakes and High Fives Over?

I have missed many things during the Covid-19 pandemic, but handshakes and high fives aren’t among them. Knowing that I need to shake someone’s hand or give them a high five makes me worry that my hands are too clammy or not soft enough, which in turn makes my palms all sweaty. Even worse is when the high five doesn’t make a loud enough slapping noise (or we miss palms altogether) and the other person insists on repeating the gesture until  we get it right. The whole process is cringey and unnecessary, which is why I think handshakes and high fives should be permanently over.

I never enjoyed the rituals of handshakes and high fives, but it wasn’t until the pandemic that I realized how gross and potentially dangerous they are. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 70 percent of people don’t always wash their hands after using the bathroom. Additionally, most people, including myself, tend to touch their face more than they realize, which makes it easy for germs that are on your hands to get in your nose and mouth. Even after we don’t have to be constantly vigilant about contracting Covid-19, there will be plenty of other diseases, including the plain old flu, that we’ll be in danger of catching from touching someone else’s unwashed hands.

I know that people who are fans of physical contact argue that handshakes are a sign of respect and confidence, but there’s no actual need to touch when we greet each other. In other countries, like Japan and Thailand, people customarily bow as a greeting. A bow signifies respect perhaps to an even greater degree than our handshakes can convey. For situations where high fives are the norm, elbow bumps, or even quick fist bumps, are far more sanitary and less stressful than trying to align your palm perfectly with another person’s in order to make a loud clap.

In the future, if people really still want to give high fives and handshakes, they could do them with close friends and family members who are also fans of these rituals. But there are plenty of safe, easy alternatives for saying hello to strangers and casual acquaintances. As for me, I’d be happy to never shake hands or high five again.

In my opinion, handshakes and high fives will never be over because they convey so much more than words alone can express. Whether you’re high fiving a teammate after they score a goal or you’re shaking the hand of an adult you want to impress, these small acts of physical contact speak volumes about your friendliness and self-confidence. They may take only a second or two, but these brief gestures are forms of nonverbal validation that instantly make you feel better.

It’s no accident that even during the pandemic people have quickly found other ways to maintain some form of physical contact. Forearm bumps, elbow bumps, and shoe taps are the current versions of handshakes and high fives. The popularity of these gestures shows that people will do whatever they can to touch each other as a form of greeting or congratulations.

While these substitutions are good short-term solutions to not being able to make skin-to-skin contact, they will never fully replace the real thing. In fact, according to a study by the University of Miami, 60 percent of people surveyed said they felt touch-deprived during the pandemic. The simple truth is, people need physical contact to survive.

People who are not fans of handshakes and high fives may argue that the risk of passing germs from Covid and other contagious diseases makes physical contact unsafe. But shaking hands has survived past pandemics and plagues, including the Spanish influenza outbreak of 1918. Back then, people were encouraged to salute each other in greeting. But once that pandemic ended, they went right back to shaking hands. Once the Covid-19 pandemic is over, I suspect we’ll do the same.

If anything, the current crisis has taught us how critical physical contact is. Nothing can replace the connection created by a handshake or high five. In the future we might have to be more careful about how we do them, but they are here to stay.