They make parents and administrators "feel good." That's a significant benefit, one that drives a lot of purchasing decisions.

Not only that. They give them a paper trail that they made safety-focused decisions. That especially applies to administrators.

Of course this is anecdotal evidence, but me and my 3 brothers grew up with a lot of silly or dangerous stuff: climbing on trees, skateboarding, snowboarding, trampolines, jumping down stairs, jumping over ramps with the bike, jumping from cliffs and bridges etc.

Our parents would just let us do our stuff. And although we were bruised all the time only one of us broke a bone once.

In the same time my friend with over-careful doctors as parents broke arms/legs roughly four times. And other kids with paranoid parents had similar problems.

Our parents thought us early on that we need to judge these risks ourselves, while these other kids would be extremely scared of harmless stuff at one point and overconfident in other more dangerous situations.

Perhaps your friends parents were over-careful because their kids kept breaking bones? Kids are different. Mine is very risk-averse and has essentially never hurt himself bad. I was the same way as a kid. His friends are daredevils who hurt themselves constantly.

Also, when it comes to "our parents in the past would let us do anything and I came out ok" sounds a bit like survival bias to me. In Sweden, far fewer kids die today than in the 70s, so perhaps there's some merit to bicycle helmets, safer playgrounds and not letting your kids eats whole grapes unattended before the age of five or so etc.

Or maybe the parents became over paranoid, because their kids where prone to injure themselves and even broke logs multiple times.

Maybe the parents were not so much paranoid as reacting to their kids either doing dumber stuff or being more clumsy or having weaker bones.

> If these playgrounds are more expensive to build and deliver no benefit at all, surely they would have been abandoned long ago

How does that follow?

For something to be abandoned, there needs to be social agreement that it is a bad idea. This is meaningfully different than something being a bad idea.

Your faith in the rationality of the world is a bit too strong.

lol as if that's how the world works

> If these playgrounds are more expensive to build and deliver no benefit at all, surely they would have been abandoned long ago.

human beings are often not rational

They do have a benefit — ada compliance. Fun is less important than not getting sued.

The derisking for the playground owner/exploiter still works regardless.