In the drowning prevention community, we dread hearing the other F-word: floaties. These seemingly innocuous devices give responsible parents a false sense of security with the assumption that the inflatables will keep their kids safe and help teach them to swim. But in practice, consistent floatie use increases the risks of accidental drowning.
With U.S. drowning deaths on the rise for the first time in decades, the silent contributor to America’s childhood drowning crisis needs to be addressed.
Kids — and parents — love floaties because they allow children to enter and navigate the water without direct help. For evidence, consider the army of floatie-equipped toddlers fearlessly cannonballing into the deep end of their local pools, often despite not knowing how to swim. The problems with this all-too-common summer scene are twofold.
First, floaties create a false sense of security for kids and their parents. Children who regularly use the floatation aids can fall under the dangerous illusion they know how to swim. Meanwhile, caregivers wrongly assume their children are safe and require less supervision.
Second, rather than floating horizontally, inflatable armbands place children in a vertical configuration known in the water-safety world as the “drowning position.” To illustrate, let’s revisit our cannonballing kiddo. After leaping into the pool, his head will dip briefly under water before popping back above the surface.
He’ll then use his legs to tread wate.
