Wow! People love hearing about imaginary friends. It has been a week to remember. Reuters picked up the press release about the study from the University of Otago media department (my co-authors Elaine Reese is currently affiliated with UofO).
It was amazing to see the range of news outlets that reported on the story. The list includes ABC news online, Canada.com (resulting in it being published in number of western Canadian newspapers including one my family reads), Yahoo news in a number of countries, the Ugandan News.net, the China Post, the Irish Sun, a number of outlets in India and the Oman Observer! The release was also translated into Spanish, Chinese, and Italian. There have been mentions on radio stations relayed back via friends. I even checked the Twitter-verse and found a few tweets including one from the Howard University Student Radio Station WHBC 830am (thanks guys).
Surprisingly the only flub was the “Globe and Mail” a large Canadian newspaper that edited me completely out of the story! These things happen and they corrected the web report (although the correction is pretty odd as they have now removed Elaine’s name).
While this has been personally energizing the most exciting result of this global press coverage has been the attention on the important role of play in human development. I’m hoping it was able to encourage many adults, parents or not to talk about play in a positive and energized way.
I wanted to thank everyone who supported me during the research and writing process. My co-author Dr. Elaine Reese has been an unbelievable collaborator and supporter.
Finally I wanted to thank my partner Shilo. She is just as responsible for this research as I am.
Ok, back to reality and hurray for “bambini con un amico immaginario!”
