Rise of the X-Games

[ The Overprotected Kid, by Hanna Rosin ] What’s lost amid all this protection? In the mid-1990s, Norway passed a law that required playgrounds to meet certain safety standards. Ellen Sandseter, a professor of early-childhood education at Queen Maud University College in Trondheim, had just had her first child, and she watched as one by one the playgrounds in her neighborhood were transformed into sterile, boring places. Sandseter had written her master’s dissertation on young teens and their need for sensation and risk; she’d noticed that if they couldn’t feed that desire in some socially acceptable way, some would turn to more-reckless behavior. She wondered whether a similar dynamic might take hold among younger kids as playgrounds started to become safer and less interesting.

I have long thought that the rise of x-games, wild trick skateboarding and biking, etc., was in large part due to how we've coddled our kids for so long. They are so bored with the activities we have given them, that they are desperate for something unexpected and exciting