The item touching the screen must add sufficient capacitance so the voltage in the sensing electrodes in the screen changes.
It needs to be either connected to something large, or have a capacitive connection back to the screen ground.
A small electrically isolated item will not work on a capacitive screen.
It could work with a digitiser (or dual mode) screen, as they work by detecting a resonant circuit, which could be embedded in an object.
You can (or could) also get "touchscreen" devices that did not rely on contact at all, they had an array of IR emitters and detectors around the screen and a finger (or any object) within about a mm of the actual screen surface blocked some part of the IR beam "mesh".