History Main / InvisibleToAdults

* The original stories surrounding [[TheSlenderManMyhthos Slender Man]] had him being only visible to the children he would eventually kidnap.

* Only young children (for example, Amu's sister) or those who have Guardian Characters themselves seem able to see the Charas from ''Shugo Chara''.

* This becomes a minor plot point in the later part of Zilpha Keatley Snyder's ''The Changeling''. Little Josie, who sees all kinds of things, says she saw and talked with the ghost mother Annabelle of the burnt-out house, who gave her a bunch of dried flowers.

* In the Kirstie Alley tooth fairy movie ''Toothless'', the tooth fairy can only be seen by children who have not yet lost all their baby teeth.

** There's a bit of TruthInTelevision to that. Children are more likely to be able to see ghosts than adults.

* RealLife: There is an audio range that is primarily only heard by young people. You can read an article about it [[http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2006/05/25/stealth-ringtone-can-only-be-heard-by-teens/ here]]

* Children are statistically more likely to have ESP abilities and be able to see ghosts.

* I'm very sure you have felt this way.
** Who are you talking to?

When in a story someone or something [[ByTheEyesOfTheBlind can only be seen by a select group of people]], in an overhelming amount of cases those people will be the children. Why? Possibly because ChildrenAreInnocent, and they do not [[WeirdnessCensor automatically disregard the unusual as impossible]]. This can lead to an AdultsAreUseless scenario, where the child can lead their parents straight to the creature and even talk with it, [[NotNowKiddo but the adult simply cannot tell that the creature is there]].

* The FairlyOddparents can be viewed by babies without triggering the need to go away forever.

** The kid's were probably excited over the fact he was hobo playing the violin and not his skill.
* People with the kinds of brains that make them hypersensitive (Autism spectrum, Asperger's, AD/HD) often notice things others can't. Imagine being a kid and being fully aware of the blink of fluorescent lights, or the itchiness of certain kinds of fabric, or that almost inaudible whine from electronics, and being driven slowly insane by something no one else, least of all adults, seems to notice.
** Some people even have this well into adulthood, except that it's a little harmful when they were kids and being annoyed by something.

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When in a story someone or something [[ByTheEyesOfTheBlind can only be seen by a select group of people]], in an overhelming amount of cases those people will be the children. Why? Possibly because ChildrenAreInnocent, and [[WeirdnessCensor they do not automatically disregard the unusual as impossible]]. This can lead to an AdultsAreUseless scenario, where the child can lead their parents straight to the creature and even talk with it, [[NotNowKiddo but the adult simply cannot tell that the creature is there]].

There is also the idea, closely related with the concept of the {{Masquerade}}, that all the fantasies one had as a child were in fact real, but people started denying them to be as they grew older. This is usually seen as a natural process that all people are subject to, although [[{{Muggles}} some]] are more seriously affected than others. [[ImaginaryFriend Imaginary Friends]] and Santa Claus are typically presented as this. There is AnAesop about [[ChildrenAreSpecial losing something important part of yourself with losing your inner child in stories that feature this idea]]. Occassionally you get a rare adult who is extempt from under the effect of this, usually because they have kept their childish demeanour and might be viewed as somewhat strange by normal society. Another grown-up who is affected by this but is still able to acknowledge the existence of the (to him) unseen world (out of faith or from second-hand experience) is also very common. Some coming of age stories present this as a tragical but inevitable process as the character is fully aware that this is happening to them, gradually losing their memory about how things used to be.

Compare AdultsAreUseless, ChildrenAreSpecial and InvisibleToNormals.

* The MonsterClown in ''{{IT}}''
** Not really true, as the monster just choses to take kids and not adults. Remember that when the kids come back to the town years later as midlife adults, they can see the monster perfectly (plus the clown is just one of the forms the BigBad uses).

* In the ''HisDarkMaterials'' trilogy, the Specters from Cittàgazze can only be seen by older people.
** Also, each person has an individual "death", who follows them around throughout life and then leads them to the afterlife when they die. They hide from those who are afraid of them (which is most people), but can be seen if you really want to.
* In the ''StarWars'' novel ''Dark Apprentice'', [[spoiler: Luke Skywalker]]'s Force ghost can be seen only by the Solo twins, Jacen and Jaina. Although they see him through the Force, the trope still applies since the other Jedi were unable to detect him.
* The sleigh bell the little boy receives in ''The Polar Express'' can only be heard by people who believe in Santa.

* Death from ''{{Discworld}}'' appeared as a skeleton only to children. To adults, he just is a an odd blur of perception. All they know is that they are NOT seeing a talking skeleton.

* Al in ''QuantumLeap'' could only be seen by Sam, animals, children, and the mentally ill/diminished, though they were pretty inconsistent about it.
-->'''Al:''' You can see me? Oh, of course you can, [[ChildrenAreInnocent you're an innocent child]], and... [[HandWave alpha waves]]...
** Al explained that it was 'a bit like tuning a radio'. His appearance was transmitted with brainwaves that would be received by Sam's brain, but other brains would usually be tuned to a different 'frequency'. But some people were tuned to the same 'frequency' as Sam, and could see Al. In at least one case Al was seen by a sane adult male.

* The alien audio signal in the ''TheOuterLimits'' episode "Music of the Spheres" is only recognizable as music to teenagers.

* ''StarTrekNewFrontier'', "Gods Above": No one but Moke can see Woden and an [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence ascended McHenry]] at first, but that's because 1. [[spoiler:Moke is Woden's son]]; 2. Woden's enemies are keeping them concealed, and 3. They don't see them because [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve they don't believe they're there]].
* One thing I've noticed is that back in the 1970s when I was a child I could tell the difference between a show that was live or videotaped, and one that was on film. Most adults I asked could not tell the difference.

** Something similar applies to boogeymen from ''Dark Tales & Disturbing Legends'', a {{Ravenloft}} supplement.

** Spoofed in ''TheSimpsons'' with Osmodiar, a similar-looking alien that can only be seen by Homer. And indeed, the audience can't see it either.

* Played with in ''TeenTitans'' animated. One of the baby heroes in the final season had a companion who may or may not have been an ImaginaryFriend. Raven could not see him until she believed in him.
** Actually, it didn't become visible until it was no longer afraid of Raven. The eight foot tall nightmarish monster bear was shy.

** It's not quite 100% that either young people can hear this or older people can't, though.
*** This older person can hear it.
*** This troper is nineteen and can just barely hear a really faint hum.
*** This troper is pushing forty and can hear it quite clearly. And it's ''really'' irritating!
** Also, the infamous [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mosquito Mosquito device]].
** Similar to the Mosquito device are cat alarms, very high-pitched noises on motion sensors designed to keep cats off lawns. An unintentional side effect is to irritate anyone young enough to hear it every time they walk past the garden.
*** Not always unintentional. In the UK, they tested teenager repelling devices to stop young people congregating outside shops. This was a while ago though, and this troper [[IncrediblyLamePun hasn't heard anything since]].
**** Its discontinuation might have had something to do with kids recording the noise to use as their mobile ringtone in school so the teachers couldn't hear their phones going off. That and the whole dubious morality bit.
**** Notably it affects babies and toddlers as well, which is both needlessly cruel, and in any case replaces loud teenagers with crying children who have no choice but to accompany their mothers.
** Related: While everybody in the U.S. seems to be on a move toward florescent lights, this troper and her mom can't stand them - they have a decided blink that causes eye irritation after short periods, and many of them whine. There's no comparison between the light offered from them and from ordinary light bulbs, either. Hope they never get rid of normal light bulbs entirely, 'cuz we might just switch to lanterns or something.
*** You may want to look into LED-based lighting, or get better covers for the florescent lamps - this troper has similar experiences with bare florescent lights, but properly covered he can't tell them apart from ordinary bulbs.
*** As for the comparison between their light qualities, newer florescent lights have improved coloration so they glow a warm yellow color like the older light bulbs too.
*** This pageless troper has run into people that have problems with CRT computer monitors; I've found I can see a flicker when the display is set to the default 60hz refresh rate. When I set it up to 85hz, no problem.
*** Ordinary light bulbs blink too, since they run directly on alternating current (probably at 100Hz or 120Hz depending on the country).
**** Old-fashioned thermal light bulbs do not blink, since they use black-body radiation from a very hot object to generate the light. The bulb's glow thread is heated up to a temperature at which it emits visible light, and is kept there by the energy deposited in it by its electric resistance. The period of the electric current does not 'turn off' between peaks long enough to significantly affect the glow thread's temperature.
* When I was a child, whenever I turned on a U.S. television set that used tubes, I could hear the whine-like hum when they were warming up, but most adults could not hear it. When TV sets stopped using tubes (except for the picture tube) in the mid-1970s, the issue became moot.

* In an experiment put on by the Washington Post, on Jan. 12, 2007, Joshua Bell (if not the top living violinist certainly in the top five) took his 3.5 million dollar Stradivarius down to a Metro substation in Washington D.C. and played classical music as a busker. It was captured on film by hidden camera. Of the thousand people who passed him by, only seven adults sufficiently recognized that they were listening to something special and stopped to listen to him play (and only one recognized him). But on the film you can see most every child who hears his obvious skill brighten up, look around, and tug desperately at their parents who - having places to go and things to do - relentlessly bull them along. (He made $32 over about two hours, not counting $20 from the man who recognized him.)