A huge new survey has revealed there are around one million imaginary friends in the UK - with 17 per cent of parents saying their child has one.

But children who use a smartphone are less likely to have one - even though they still believe in ghosts, Santa and the tooth fairy.

The research was carried out for Legal and General and discovered who has imaginary friends, and what age they disappear and what they are likely to look like.


The peak age for finding an imaginary friend is four years old - and while researchers used to believe having one should be discouraged, or even a sign of mentall illness, it is now thought that ‘rehearsing’ conversations and interactions with imaginary friends can help children improve their social skills and expand their creative thinking.

According to the study, 17% of 3 to 10 year-olds currently have an imaginary friend, and by the age of 10, there’s a 37% chance a child will have had one.

When asked how they felt about imaginary companions, parents concern differed depending on whether their child had ever had a fictional friend. Among parents of children without imaginary friends, 50% said they would be at least ‘slightly concerned’ if their child told them they had one. Among parents of children with imaginary friends, only 21% expressed concern.


Six out of 10 imaginary friends are human, while the rest are a mix of animals and other creatures. Unicorns are more common than cats and only slightly less common than dogs. Girls are 2.5 times more likely than boys to have an invisible unicorn as a friend (10% vs 4%).

Among the 8% of imaginary companions that weren’t people, animals or unknown personalities, there were ninjas, trains, aliens, skeletons, and many miscellaneous monsters. Some parents didn’t know what species their child’s imaginary friend was. ‘Not sure – he lives down the plug hole’, said one mum.


Forty-one percent of the parents surveyed said they were aware of their child playing with their imaginary friend at least once per week, and 26% said at least once per day, which suggests an ongoing friendship similar to that of a real child.

Girls were more likely than boys to have companions that were smaller than them (34% vs 24%) and they were also less biased towards the gender of their fictional friend.


Girls are also slightly more likely to say that their imaginary friend sometimes protects them. Several parents said their child’s invisible friend wards off other imagined monsters, especially at night and during bad dreams.

On average, one in five parents said their child had blamed something they did on their imaginary friend, with boys being a bit more likely than girls to pass the buck to their imaginary pal.

One in four parents felt their child was more sociable thanks to their interactions with an imaginary friend, and 3 out of four said their child was more creative.


Just as adult friendships can run their course as circumstances change, kids’ relationships with their invisible playmates gradually fade as well. Fourteen percent of imaginary friends are around for three to six months, 27% last for six months to one year, and 25% survive one to two years. Only 6%, equivalent to 60,000 of today’s fantasy friends, live longer than three years.

Imaginary friends aren’t the only invisible characters children believe in. In fact, some of the most widely believed beings aren’t the creations of children at all.

Belief in the Tooth Fairy conveniently rises and falls with the need for a mutual agreement between child and parent to swap baby teeth for coins under pillows. Ghosts are a little different, however. Of the seven widespread mythical creatures and characters we polled parents on, the belief in ghosts among kids was the most consistent, ranging from 38% at the age of 3 to 26% at 10. Interestingly, some parents believed their children’s imaginary friends were evidence of the afterlife.

Children who believe in various mythical characters are more likely to have imaginary friends. Kids are 46% more likely to think unicorns are real if they’ve had an invisible companion, and 28% more likely to believe fairies exist.


Among primary school children (five to 11-years-old), 16% of children who spent less than an hour a day on screens had an imaginary friend compared to 20% of those who spent more than two hours using a screen. This suggests that technology can have a negative impact on the creativity of younger children, but that the effect lessens as they get older. This result is backed up by previous research showing that children with heavy use of television, video games and computers scored worse than those with light use on tests of visual memory, attention span and – the crucial faculty used to dream up imaginary friends – creative imagination.