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Comment by programmertote | Hacker News Reader

I won't be surprised if 'imaginary friend' thing is probably tied to specific culture/regions. I grew up in a SE Asian country and there, we never heard of kids talking to imaginary friends. I myself grew up only imagining that I was fighting with robots, cars, machines, etc. When my sister played, she pretends she's selling some stuff like food to us (my brother and I). I also used to imagine that I am superman or someone who can fly. That's about it. Never imagined having an imaginary friend who I talk to regularly, and never heard of my friends or any family members saying it's normal to imagine like that.

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).

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I don't know anybody that had an imaginary friend either. It would be really funny if having an imaginary friend and being a creative type that makes TV shows were highly correlated, so that everybody working on Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends (a cartoon series) thought imaginary friends were completely normal, while the people who don't grow up to be writers wonder why everyone on TV has imaginary friends.

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.

> American TV culture is just different parts of the life of a TV writer expressed over and over again

This is very true. That’s why so many TV shows are about inexplicably rich, sex-obsessed young people.

I don't know, I'd assume a big chunk of that is also related to the most profitable demographic for fiction TV shows being working- and middle-class men between 18-35. Give them some aspirational characters that reflect what they want out of life and you'll hook them for years.

I never knew anyone with an imaginary friend growing up either, USSR, ex-USSR, and U.S.

Of course shows are just a byproduct of the writer's experiences, some famous TV shows even use that to an advantage. See 30 Rock. Or how The Office integrates the cameramen. Many popular writers are producers and sometimes actors as well, so we're definitely consuming a narrow viewpoint.

My son had an imaginary dog named Baxter from 1-3 yrs old. It was great --- we would set a plate on the floor with food for Baxter at dinner time. He's 9 now and I miss Baxter.

Apparently I had an imaginary friend when I was 3 or 4. I don't really have any memories of it though and it didn't last beyond that. Having an imaginary friend at 10+ seems strange to me.

It's a common thing among adults across the globe though. Well, "imaginary friend" might be pushing it but lots of people let imaginary entities help them understand the world and find their place in it. It would be interesting to see how the two compare.

I grew up in East Asia and have also never heard of any kids with imaginary friends. This was something I learned of only after moving to America. What I'm curious is now that I live in America and have a kid, will my kid be likely to have imaginary friend? For example, would school materials or cartoons available here likely lead to someone having imaginary friends, even if in our household we (as Asian parents in America) don't teach (or mention) anything about imaginary friends? (according to the article, 65% of 7 year-old American kids do)

I grew up in the US and have lived here all my life, and I didn't have an imaginary friend and can't remember any other kids mentioning one. Now I have an only child, which seems like a likely candidate for such a thing, but he's never done it and I've never heard about any of his friends doing it either. So shrug it's one of those things I've always heard is "common and normal" but never actually witnessed.

I had some for a brief period. More like characters I imagined interacting with me, and with one another. I could have told you they weren't real, of course.

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.

> I won't be surprised if 'imaginary friend' thing is probably tied to specific culture/regions.

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'm from Spain, and I relate 100% to all you say (including the falling sleep quick!).

I've never really heard of it in Netherland either. I mean, playing with dolls or other toys, sure, but never to the level that the child seems to think they're actually real or develop complex personalities, as seems to be the case in American imaginary friend stories.

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?

I'm American and have never known anyone who had an imaginary friend during my entire childhood or adulthood. (40 years old, midwest)

Either my cohort is very unusual or the stats given are BS.

The American children's storyscape has been rich with appeals to imagination as the primary desirable faculty, to be cultivated and expanded without bounds. This has been the case for some decades, now.

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.

> This has further-reaching consequences for the worldview of these children if you observe them today.

Do you have some examples?

If you count Ben Shapiro RTs, then sure. Otherwise, not so much.

How is the local religion ? does it include visible deities ? Maybe those become part of inner worlds of children inn SE Asia ?

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