We all have imaginary friends that we believe will one day make us magically more successful, rich, and beautiful. It’s just hard for us to observe that from within the system.<p>Kids, on the other hand, are simple creatures. They’ll demonstrate exactly what they feel and think. That makes observing this effect much easier.
Probably because humans are supposed to naturally live in groups where human friends are plentiful, but lots of human children instead live only with parents.
"If you find your child talking to a can of tomato paste, don't worry". I don't think anyone's ever been worried about kids having imaginary friends. So long as the furniture doesn't start moving by itself.
> These companions can take a variety of forms — in the 2004 study, which looked at 100 6- and 7-year olds, 57 percent of imaginary friends were human, 41 percent were animals, and one was “a human capable of transforming herself into any animal the child wanted.”<p>Real world data is a messy thing
In my 3 year old's case, it's largely a matter of re-enacting scenes from her life or things she has seen in cartoons. For example, she has three rubber duckies in the bath, one of which is larger than the other two; that's "Mommy duck" and sometimes she tells the "baby ducks" that she has to go off to work because she's the concertmaster of the orchestra, at which point the baby ducks complain and ask her to stay home with them instead.<p>Young kids struggle to think about things in abstract; re-enacting situations is a natural part of how they come to understand their experiences. In this case, it's the experience of being left alone with Daddy because Mommy is going to work.
<i>> …these friendships used to be seen as a sign of loneliness or other problems…</i><p><i>> One study found that Japanese children played with their personified objects more during the pandemic than they had beforehand, suggesting an increased role for these imaginary companions during times of isolation…</i><p>So lonely isolated kids turn to imaginary friends more often. But imaginary friends are not a sign of loneliness.<p>Right.
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This reasoning seems circular. In order to practice social skills with an imaginary friend, the friend you imagine would have to have realistic behavior, you would already need a fairly accurate model of behavior to imagine the friend to get any benefit from it. If you imagine a friend who communicates by barking and eats rocks, what social benefit would you get?