Screens are part of everyday life and they offer plenty of benefits, but they can't, and shouldn't, do everything. They can't create the joyful tiredness that comes from climbing and running. They can't teach cooperation through negotiation. They can't offer fresh air, age-appropriate risk or the satisfaction that comes from working hard and reaching a new height.

This isn't about choosing one type of activity over another. It's about recognizing that balance is important and playgrounds offer something unique and powerful — the kind of growth that comes from movement, time outside and natural interaction with others.

Here are six reasons the playground delivers what screens simply can't. Not to spark guilt about the tablet, but to support you the next time you say, "Go outside and play."

1. Play Moves Friendship Forward

The Original Social Network

Well-designed playgrounds help build social capital in meaningful ways, especially in underserved communities. When children play, parents and community members naturally gather and connect with one another. Conversations spark, relationships form and support networks start to grow — strengthening trust and creating a sense of belonging across households that may not otherwise cross paths.

The playground becomes the original social network — where relationships form face-to-face, where neighbors learn each other's names, where communities strengthen one conversation at a time — no algorithms deciding who you see. No friend requests required. Just humans sharing physical space, building connections that matter.

2. Play Moves Your Senses

All Five Senses, All at Once

That kind of world-building requires more than a screen. Children raised with regular access to greenspaces have up to 55% lower risk of mental disorders compared to those raised without. Research shows that greenspace access reduces anxiety, depression and ADHD symptoms in children, with benefits appearing strongest for young children ages 2-5.

Screens engage two senses: sight and sound. Playgrounds activate everything. Wind on skin and grass underfoot. Birds calling overhead. The smell of rain approaching. The distinctive feel of a powder-coated steel handgrip, the smooth curve of a slide, the tactile variety of climbing surfaces. Natural materials, open sky and fresh air — even small amounts of vegetation deliver nature's calming effects in any community setting. Weather changes, seasons shift and no two visits feel quite the same. If it happens to be a Burke playground, its look is unmistakable. It's sensory richness screens can't touch.

3. Play Moves Confidence

Achievement You Can Actually Feel

That first time across the monkey bars without help. The day the tall slide looks exciting and approachable. These moments deliver something fundamentally different from leveling up in a game: physical proof you did something difficult.

Your body knows the difference between tapping a screen and genuinely conquering a challenge. The dopamine hit is real in both cases, but playground achievement comes with the development of muscle memory and increased strength, all while gaining confidence in physical abilities. No one can take it away. No server crashes. No lost progress. The achievement lives in your body, not your device. You earned it by actually doing it — and tomorrow, you can do it again, maybe faster, maybe higher or maybe even teach someone else how.

4. Play Moves Connection

No NPCs, Just People

Nonplayer characters (NPCs) follow scripts. Real kids improvise. The negotiations that happen at a playground — whose turn on the swing, whether this game needs a lava monster — teach skills no game can replicate.

Real-time social learning with zero lag. Immediate feedback when you cut in line or exclude someone. Genuine collaboration building a stick fort. Conflict resolution that matters because you'll see these people tomorrow. Parents and grandparents, teenagers and toddlers — all occupying the same space, all figuring it out together. No buffering, no loading screens, no preset dialogue options. Just humans learning to be humans, in real time, in face-to-face interactions and genuine connection.

5. Play Moves Imaginations

Boredom Is a Feature, Not a Bug

In many ways, screens are engineered to eliminate boredom. Playgrounds embrace it. And here's why that matters: Creativity requires space. Imagination needs gaps to fill.

Give a kid 10 minutes of "nothing to do" at a playground and watch what happens. The wood chips become lava. The slide becomes a spaceship. That fascinating curved thing suddenly becomes essential to the game six kids just invented. Boredom isn't the problem — it's the invitation. The empty space where kids learn to entertain themselves, to create their own rules, to discover that the best games are the ones nobody programmed. Unstructured time isn't wasted time. It's where innovation lives.

6. Play Moves Your Whole Body

And of Course, Play That Moves You

And of course, the thing Burke has been working, playing and building around for more than a century is movement itself. Not just any movement — Play That Moves You^®.

Real movement exhausts the body in ways that improve sleep quality. It develops some impressively named abilities like proprioception (understanding where your body is in space) and vestibular input (balance, spatial orientation). Running, climbing, spinning, swinging — these aren't just exercise. They're fundamental to how children's brains wire themselves for coordination, spatial reasoning and physical confidence.

Bodies need more than thumbs moving. They need whole-body, challenging, varied physical activity that happens outside, in three dimensions, with gravity and physics making real demands. That's not anti-technology. It's just biology.

An Ending That Moves You

Your Scroll Is Almost Over

Screens offer simulations. Playgrounds offer firsthand life experienve — physical, unscripted, real. It's not lifelike. It's life.

The goal isn't eliminating screen time. It's creating spaces that are compelling enough for kids to choose to go outside. When playgrounds deliver genuine challenge, social connection, sensory richness and room for imagination, the choice becomes easier — for everyone.

Ready to create a playground that kids actually choose? Connect with your Burke representative to explore how thoughtful design creates Play That Moves You — the kind that pulls kids away from screens without a single ultimatum.