Welcome to the July issue of The Highlight

An illustration of a hand with screen-like rectangles falling around it.

Once upon a time, Sara Herschander writes, going through life meant interacting with the world around you — turning a fiddly key in a lock, scratching out notes on paper, dialing a phone number on an actual keypad. But increasingly, all of those tasks — and many others — feel the same: You just tap at a screen. In this month’s Highlight cover story, Sara explains how we’re losing touch with our sense of, well, touch — plus why young children are suffering the worst effects of all that screen time, and whether a return to a more tactile world is imminent. Also in this issue: Good news about America’s birthday. How organ donation is complicating the line between dead and dying. The rise of extremely convincing AI thirst traps. And the great American quest for the great American novel.