Until a year ago we had an invisible lodger in our house named Uncle. My daughter would call him on the phone, elaborate domestic arrangements involving bus routes and placatory hmms – we would prepare for his arrival with tea cups and saucers, the only time such objects found a place in our lives. Uncle was tall and lived in a pink house that was “very thin”, and it was always a schlep for him to visit, and he often got lost. Still, though, he managed to join us on holiday, and to come to our parents’ houses, and to the park, despite his many phobias. Until one day, he was forgotten – any mention to my daughter of her imaginary friend was met with a scrunched sort of embarrassment. For us.
It is no tragedy that a child’s imaginary friend dissolves with age. They fade into the pre-school fog when real friends, by which I mean children, by which I mean small people who cry about breakfast and teach each other how to draw hands, take priority. But it is being reported as a tragedy that imaginary friends are dissolving altogether. In 2004, it was estimated that by the age of seven, 65% of children had an imaginary friend. Last month a study of nursery workers revealed that 72% believed children have fewer imaginary friends than they did five years ago, blaming, guess, correct, screens. Screens, those imagination leeches, those glass sponges of boredom and self – there are few things adults fear and lust over in equal measure as much as the phone screen. Perhaps Beyoncé, or bread.
Could it be? Could it be that a tool that allows us to distract ourselves from the slipping cliff of reality has rid children of an inner life? Of a man who appeared one night, built from candy-floss and curtains, who does not like peas? Or (as one of the news stories reported) an imaginary friend who was “a tiny completely white person who lives in the light of lamps”, brrrr. I loved Uncle, and I loved reading details of these odd kids’ odd friends, and I loved reading the psychologists newly extolling their value in helping children develop their social skills – especially after a history of warning parents that imaginary friends were a sign of mental illness.
But I believe reports of their deaths are greatly exaggerated. Much as it’s lonely to be the sole remaining cheerleader for the internet, the place monsters moved after Ikea popularised under-bed storage, this relentless nostalgia for the childhoods of our past (“a hoop and a Gameboy to hit it with and we were happy!”) seems misplaced. Not simply because for every opportunity a screen appears to take away, another 15 arrive to take its place, but because things like “imagination” don’t just disappear with an iPhone upgrade. They evolve, mutate.
In adulthood, when imagination is either widely believed to be a whimsical affectation along the lines of a wacky hat, or relegated dramatically in importance, it emerges in disguise. This week I read Jennifer Aniston’s account of a regular gathering with her friends where they sit in a “goddess circle” and pass around a “beechwood talking stick decorated with feathers and charms”. During goddess circles, I learned, scrolling through a number of websites that looked as though they’d been dipped in honey and dragged through Monsoon, women read “oracle cards” and manifest their desires. It becomes clear – wellness rituals, with their reliance on mystical stories that change depending on who’s holding the talking stick, are the most fashionable iteration of the adult imaginary friend. An invisible voice to rely on during moments of anxiety.
And once you’ve drawn back this curtain on adulthood, it’s hard to see life as anything but a series of imaginary friends, called upon to support a person in times of loneliness or boredom, or when the grown-ups are shouting. Politicians – strangers on screen, whose real intentions remain oblique and whose personalities appear to be cobbled together with a box of online comments and two Debenhams blazers – are an example. Characters people have invented, heroes they forget they designed themselves one night when they couldn’t sleep, created to save their families from ruin.
We know so little about the future, and what’s worse, we know we know so little, that we put faith in imaginary friends, because at least they always have an answer. Like Uncle, who my kid talked down many times from his fears (thereby overcoming her own), we populate our world with well-drawn characters upon whom we can impose our daily dooms. Screens are not erasing imaginary friends, they are updating them. The abs-baring pop star on Mail Online whose diet we fret about, the reality-show couples whose horrible relationships we are four steps ahead of, the haunted TV presenter we shout at, alone – these are imaginary friends for the over-fives, always by, and always on, our side.
Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter@EvaWiseman
