By Casey Barkan 

Toy Story 5 just released in theaters last week, and has already broken records. The film debuted with $160 million in domestic ticket sales, according to Pixar Studios. This set the record for the Toy Story franchise and also set the record for the biggest opening weekend for any movie this year. Although this movie is geared towards children, it carries importance for parents as well. In the movie, Bonnie gets a tablet named Lilypad, and slowly, the toys stop mattering. Woody, Buzz, and Jessie watch helplessly as their kid drifts away, not to her growing up, but to a screen. As Jessie says in the movie, “I’m losing Bonnie to this device.” Any parent who’s ever had to say “put the tablet down” more than three times in one evening knows exactly what she means.

The film could not have come out at a better time. A 2025 survey from Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital found that kids are clocking in 21 hours of screen time per week. This is more than double the 9 hours per week parents said they’d consider ideal. The effects of this gap are hard to ignore. As shown in Toy Story 5, children who spend more time on devices usually report higher rates of loneliness, sleep disruption, and social withdrawal.

The genius relatability of the core problem in Toy Story 5 is that technology is not the enemy. The director of the film, Andrew Stanton, was very deliberate not to portray it as such. Lilypad isn’t a villain. She genuinely believes she’s helping Bonnie thrive. She isn’t acting with malicious intent, she’s just optimized for engagement, which drives most of the conflicts in the film. The real world works in the same way. The apps and devices that compete for your kid’s attention aren’t designed by bad people trying to harm children. They’re designed to maximize the time people spend on screens. The effect on kids can still be extremely damaging, even without any villainous intent. So what’s the solution?

The solution isn’t to ban screens or to wage a war against every device in your home. It starts with presence. Sit with your kid while they’re on a device and ask real questions. Not “how long have you been on that” but “what are you playing, show me.” It’s important to keep the conversation about technology open and non-judgmental, so your

child feels like they can come to you when something online feels off. It’s also important to protect time for unstructured, imaginative play not as a punishment alternative to screens, but something that’s worth doing on its own. Set device-free zones in spaces like the dinner table, the bedroom at night, etc. The goal isn’t to raise a screen-free child, but rather, it’s to raise one who knows how to live with technology without being consumed by it. If a cowgirl and a space ranger can figure it out, so can we.

Conversation Starters:

  1. What kinds of things do you do on your phone/tablet?
  2. What do you enjoy about these things?
  3. Are there other activities not on a screen you enjoy doing?
  4. Do you talk to your friends online?

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