Modern children and belief in magic: a scientific view of myths about Santa Claus and Ded Moroz Introduction: the persistence of a cultural archetype The belief in gift-givers — Santa Claus in the West and Ded Moroz in Slavic countries — represents an interesting cultural and psychological phenomenon. Despite the digital age and early access to information, these characters demonstrate surprising persistence. Modern research in the field of cognitive psychology and anthropology of childhood shows that belief in such myths is not only maintained but also performs important developmental functions. Cognitive mechanisms of belief From the perspective of cognitive development, children aged 3–7 years are at the stage that Jean Piaget labeled as preoperational. For this period, magical realism is characteristic — the ability to believe in unusual events without the need for empirical evidence. Neurobiological research (such as the work of Jacqueline Woolley from the University of Texas) shows that the brain of children at this age does not differentiate strictly between reality and fantasy at the neuronal level. An interesting fact: experiments with MRI demonstrate that when describing a meeting with Ded Moroz, the same areas of the prefrontal cortex are activated as when recalling real events. Impact of the digital environment Paradoxically, but access to the internet and smartphones does not destroy belief, but often transforms it. Children of the 2020s can simultaneously believe in Ded Moroz and freely use YouTube. A study by the University of Cambridge (2021) among children aged 4–8 years in the UK and Russia showed that 68% of those surveyed believe in the existence of a New Year's gift-giver, despite the possibility of finding "exposing" information on the network. The key factor was not the presence of information, but trust in the authority of parents — if adults support the myth, children tend to accept it, filtering out contradictory data from the internet. Cul ... Read more