page_title: Playground
section_title: Unintended consequences
hierarchical_section_title: Playground / Safety / Unintended consequences
caption_attribution_description: English: The main structure of the swingset &amp; fort &amp; sandbox and rope-climb and slide is in the center, assembled, but there are still multiple boards laid out, waiting to be assembled in this multi-faceted handyman project. There were literally hundreds and hundreds of different types of fasteners, including screws, carriage bolts, often requiring different drill bits and wrenches to install.
context_page_description: A playground, playpark, or play area is a place specifically designed to enable children to play there. It is typically outdoors. While a playground is usually designed for children, some target other age groups or people with disabilities. A playground might exclude children below a certain age.
  Modern playgrounds often have recreational equipment such as the seesaw, merry-go-round, swingset, slide, jungle gym, chin-up bars, sandbox, spring rider, trapeze rings, playhouses, and mazes, many of which help children develop physical coordination, strength, and flexibility, as well as providing recreation and enjoyment and supporting social and emotional development. Common in modern playgrounds are play structures that link many different pieces of equipment.
  Playgrounds often also have facilities for playing informal games of adult sports, such as a baseball diamond, a skating arena, a basketball court, or a tether ball.
  Public playground equipment installed in the play areas of parks, schools, childcare facilities, institutions, multiple family dwellings, restaurants, resorts, and recreational developments, and other areas of public use.
context_section_description: As a result of what some experts say is overprotectiveness driven by a fear of lawsuits, playgrounds have been designed to be, or at least to appear, excessively safe.  This overprotectiveness may protect the playground owner from lawsuits, but it appears to result in a decreased sense of achievement and increased fears in children.
  The equipment limitations result in the children receiving less value from the play time.  The enclosed, padded, constrained, low structures prevent the child from taking risks and developing a sense of mastery over his or her environment.  Successfully taking a risk is empowering to children.  For example, a child climbing to the top of a tall jungle gym feels happy about successfully managing the challenging climb to the top, and he experiences the thrill of being in a precarious, high position.  By contrast, the child on a low piece of equipment, designed to reduce the incidence of injuries from falls, experiences no such thrill, sense of mastery, or accomplishment.  Additionally, a lack of experience with heights as a child is associated with increased acrophobia (fear of heights) in adults.
  The appearance of safety encourages unreasonable risk-taking in children, who might take more reasonable risks if they correctly understood that it is possible to break a bone on the soft surfaces under most modern equipment.
  Finally, the playground that is designed to appear low-risk is boring, especially to older children.  As a result, they tend to seek out alternative play areas, which may be very unsafe.
  Risk management is an important life skill, and risk aversion in playgrounds is unhelpful in the long term. Experts studying child development such as Tim Gill have written about the over-protective bias in provision for children, particularly with playgrounds.  Instead of a constructed playground, allowing children to play in a natural environment such as open land or a park is sometimes recommended; children gain a better sense of balance playing on uneven ground, and learn to interpret the complexity and signals of nature more effectively.
caption: A playground being built for a homeowner's backyard as part of a handyman project. Modern playgrounds can have many options besides swingsets, including sandboxes, rope-climbs, tic-tac-toe games, a fort with dormer roofs and a chimney, a slide, and other amenities.
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