In Pixar’s forthcoming film “Toy Story 5,” the toys have a new problem to solve: technology.
After their kid, Bonnie, receives a new Tablet-like toy, Jessie, Rex, Forky and the rest of the gang must fight to keep her playing.
“It’s not even really about a battle so much as the realization of an existential problem: that nobody’s really playing with toys anymore,” director Andrew Stanton told Empire Magazine in November 2025. “Technology has changed everybody’s lives, but we’re asking what that means for us — and to our kids.”
“Pixar is naming something that parents feel but struggle to articulate,” says child psychiatrist and author of “Why We Suffer and How We Heal” Suzan Song, “that kids aren’t meant to grow up primarily inside an algorithmic world.”
So, could “Toy Story 5,” out June 19, ultimately help parents steer their kids away from spending too much time on their screens?
That depends on its framing, says Nir Eyal, author of “Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life” and former lecturer at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
“Telling kids that screens are bad doesn’t make screens less appealing,” he says. “If anything, it makes them more appealing.” Instead, if the film explores the loss of free play and an unmet need for genuine connection with other kids, it could be a good conversation starter, he says.
“Children are more cooperative when they understand what the purpose is,” says Song. “Explain to kids that their brains need practice being bored, awkward, and figuring things out, just like muscles need exercise.”
In terms of the best way to incorporate screen time into kids’ lives, parents should avoid thinking about technology as something that needs to be eliminated and start thinking about it as something that needs to be scheduled, says Eyal.
“There’s a real difference between a movie that’s a planned family event and a screen that’s just running in the background because no one decided otherwise,” he says. One makes it an active choice, the other makes it the default mode for a moment of boredom.
“Sit down together, watch it together, talk about it,” he says. “That’s screen time serving a human purpose.”
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