Why Kids Invent Imaginary Friends
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
As I am now in my 30s, I think of ways to design different room and land layouts for my imaginary apartments, houses, island, etc. That really helps me fall asleep quick (as a side benefit).
You know how business people on TV are always stressed out about the next big presentation? In part that is due to the fact that writers work job-to-job, and everything hangs on the next big pitch. In a way I wonder if American TV culture is just different parts of the life of a TV writer expressed over and over again in different settings, complete with idiosyncratic childhood developmental tendencies that are exclusive to tomorrow's scriptwriters.
This is very true. That’s why so many TV shows are about inexplicably rich, sex-obsessed young people.
My possibly-incorrect recollection is that I thought them up on a long road trip, and that they rarely "existed" anywhere other than the car. A couple hours-long trips to relatives' houses every year, usually one big vacation involving entire days in the car, maybe one or two other longish drives a year, plus shorter journeys pretty much daily. Wonder if tons of constrained, boring car travel has anything to do with it—if not causing the phenomenon, then encouraging it, anyway.
In my book, a stuffed animal fits the definition of imaginary friend. As far as I am aware stuffed animals are a world-wide phenomenon.
I remember my favourite stuffed animal very vividly. It was a cat, hence her name was 'Caty'. When I got lost one day on vacation in (from my memory) France or Spain I kept asking for Caty. People started talking English to me, and they thought I was British, and that 'Caty' was my mother. The truth was I was missing my stuffed animal more than my mother, I was Dutch, and I didn't understand any English yet. This was in the 80s when English was a little bit less commonly used around the world. Also, because Caty got completely ragged in the washing machine from ample amounts of bouncing around 'n around my parents bought a new, unragged Caty. It didn't fool me because Caty was Caty; she was ragged and I liked her that way. Did she smell great out of the washing machine though!
I expected it to be incredibly rare, but if 65% of American kids have imaginary friends, I truly wonder what's causing it. What's so different about how American kids are raised?
Either my cohort is very unusual or the stats given are BS.
This seems to be a natural endpoint to that push for greater and greater exercise of imagination: the substitution of the real with the imagined.
This has further-reaching consequences for the worldview of these children if you observe them today.
Do you have some examples?
It was a lot of work because I imagined having to take it for walks (so I would walk around the block), or try to train it. In the end my imaginary dog bit someone (but it was self defense!) and I had to put it to sleep. No wonder I 'm now a depressive adult.
Without a doubt, adopting a dog was the best decision in my life. I highly recommend you consider doing the same, no matter how many adjustments you may have to make in your life to accommodate a new family member.
"You’ll create a tulpa by imagining a person in your head, and treating them as a person. The exact mechanism is unknown, but as you give a tulpa attention, and believe it can be a sentient person, it will grow into one, and act independently of you." https://www.tulpa.info/what-is-a-tulpa/
For that matter, you are at a significant advantage in many extremely lucrative professions (notably, politics, management, finance, media, UX design, and law) if you can create an accurate mental simulacrum of the people you interact with. This is basically what separates the people who control what others do vs. those who get controlled.
Here is a study showing the same behavior in Kenya, Malawi, Nepal and the Dominican Republic. I didn't fully read it, but there is argument that such things exist, even if they aren't as prevalent. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ijop.12423
Taylor and her colleagues found that 77 percent of these children said “yes” when asked if they had a pretend friend, and 40 percent spontaneously remarked at some point during the interview that they were talking about a pretend friend. The children offered statements such as, “Her is a fake animal,” “I just made him up in my head,” and “He’s not in real life.” Only one child was adamant that her invisible friend was real.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/growing-friendships/...
(Personal example: I deliberately lied about not understanding how to do long division just so I wouldn't look too clever in front of my peers - I kept up the pretence for several months.)
edit: To directly answer your question: I don't know, and that's part of my point.
Audience. A fake imaginary friend is a prop. The child sees imaginary friends are desirable and performs as if they have one. If there is no audience, there is no imaginary friend.
A bona fide imaginary friend, on the other hand, should be more likely to be addressed when the child thinks they’re alone.
[0]: https://www.todaysparent.com/kids/school-age/why-kids-invent...
I never had any imaginary friends. Even when other kids had fantastic expectations in the world, like asking a teacher to build a swimming pool, I was very sceptical on how will get permission and a budget for that. For me, toy cars were toys. I liked to make then run down a slope, but never tough they were real.
> what is less understood is what prompts children to create these personas or why some kids invent them and others don’t
I struggle to understand other behaviours too. When all the children were screaming in the theatre to the good guy "the bad guy is at your back!", I could not understand why the other children were screaming at the actor. He is an actor in the play, of course, he knows where the bad guy is and what is going to happen next. I felt slightly second-hand embarrassment.
> One suggested that relationships with invisible beings fulfill a child’s need for friendship and are more common among firstborn or only children.
I saw all these "imaginary friends" in movies as an American thing. Like Big Foot, I saw imaginary friends as a storytelling device, not as something real. I was surprised when I read that is a real thing, not just part of movies. But, when I grew up, most families were at least two children. So, maybe there was not much space for imaginary friends.
> it can be hard to fathom a day when the imaginary characters who’ve been populating their lives for so long simply cease to exist.
And this is for me the final irony, I continue having fun when I go to work. I will go with some weird clothing or I will draw characters from books with interesting quotes in meeting rooms. For me, there is not that strong separation between being a child and being an adult. I was responsible as a child, taking care of myself and the people around me. And, I am playful and have fun as an adult, and - inside the limits of what makes sense - I try to engage my colleagues and I make new friends all the time that I have been lucky enough to keep after moving jobs and countries.
I used to do that too, but now I find it much more fun to let go and completely engage in the plot, including feeling what protagonist feels, verbal reactions, etc. This makes good drama much better, as the director is anyway trying their best to make you feel like the actor on screen -- so why not listen? :) Watching TV with friends becomes more enjoyable too!
> Watching TV with friends becomes more enjoyable too!
My experience is the opposite. Unless those friends are also going all-in like me, watching anything that has even a smudge of a plot becomes irritating very quickly, as people around me keep breaking the immersion. For many of the TV shows and movies I watch, I try to at least get the first watch alone, so that I can enjoy the full experience.
Given the immense hours most people consume TV, they would only be reducing my own enjoyment if they detach.
FTA.
The same argument applies to orally-transmitted folklore (and notable story-tellers, before printing came along). Certainly the exercise of imagination enhances such widely-admired and long-remembered works.
The exercise of the powers of imagination is responsible for most of the great ideas of humanity.
Indeed without it, "We would own no more, know no more, and be no more than the first apelike hominids..." -- R.A.W.
I could imagine lots of fantastical and wonderful friends I would have liked to have, and even imagine what they might do or say, but that doesn't really seem the same to me.
We have 7 kids and none of them has ever had an imaginary friend. I assume it is because they have always had at least 1 other person around that they could talk to and play with that there was no need to fill that void with someone imaginary.
An imaginary friend took the blame, in her real friend's mind, for stealing dried fruit.
I don't know that it's really testable or really applicable to anything, but it is very interesting. I recommend reading even if you know you'll disagree (I'm not sure yet what my position is).
I haven't yet read the book and I'm not sure if it applies, but I found these papers interesting:
* "The case for mental duality" (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00007755)
* "The case against mental duality" (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02686749)
This was taken, in some ways ad absurdum, by Tony Wright in "Left in the Dark" / "Return to the brain of Eden" - which is also an interesting read, though I can't decide if it's science or science fiction.