Bounce houses are a seemingly normal part of childhood. I imagine most adults nowadays have played in them at least a few times. They’re soft, light, and filled with air, so nothing should be able to go wrong with them.

Unfortunately as has been seen on several recent news stories, they can be very dangerous under certain circumstances. While a properly-grounded bounce house is fairly hard to seriously injure oneself on, one that is not rooted strongly enough can be picked up by a strong gust and launched into the air.

Such a thing happened just last month when 2 young boys were inside a bounce house that got blown up into the air, and they ended up falling from about 15 feet high. Luckily both boys suffered only minor injuries, but if the gust were strong enough, it could have been 40 feet high instead.

The truth behind bounce houses is even a little darker than that would suggest, as well. According to emergency room reports, bounce house injuries are very common, and are actually getting increasingly frequent.

Safety experts have been performing studies on bounce houses, and have found that the rate of injuries has increased by 1500% when comparing 2010’s data with 1995’s.

The reason these injuries are becoming more frequent is that not only are bounce houses more popular than they used to be, but they are often DIY kits sold at toy stores, and parents are simply not anchoring them properly.

Over 11,000 children are injured every year in bounce houses in the US alone. 20 states have adopted mandatory operation requirements regarding how deeply mounting stakes must be driven and how many attendants there must be at all times.

It is only a matter of time before the other 30 states adopt similar regulations.