6 Things "Toy Story 5" Gets Right About Kids and Technology

The new Pixar film "Toy Story 5" is a nuanced exploration of the impact of technology on children. In the movie, eight-year-old Bonnie is struggling to make friends. All the kids in her neighborhood use screens to connect and insist that playing with toys is for babies.

Her parents, nervous about her difficulty making friends, acquiesce, cross their fingers, and give her a Lilypad-brand tablet. She quickly uses this technology to connect with girls from her dance class. These “friends” use this group chat to bully her for her interest in toys.

Bonnie’s toys, the film’s protagonists, spend most of the movie trying to find her a real friend. They end up learning that, while tablets can facilitate social harm, they can also help us find and connect with supportive people.

The film’s writers seem to have done careful research on children, developmental psychology, and screens. Here’s what I noticed as a therapist who specializes in the impact of screens on mental health.

1. Everyone’s using screens.

Throughout the movie, the toys are horrified to learn that technology has invaded every other home in the neighborhood. The camera pans across windows, revealing every face bathed in the blue light of a screen. This is exaggerated for effect, but isn’t far off. In many countries today, the average person spends a lot of time on screens, starting almost from birth.

One study found that children under two years old spent more than an hour on screens every day. By age 5-8, children were spending an average of 3.5 hours per day on screens.

The average British two-year-old watches more than two hours of TV or videos per day. This is highly correlated with parental education level—the more educated the parent, the less time the child spent on screens. This level of screen time access seemed to significantly impact language acquisition. Screen time climbs steadily to nearly 7 hours per day by adulthood.

2. Not all kids are ready for screens at the same time.

In the film, Bonnie appears to be a little developmentally behind her peers. She's shy and doesn’t understand the in-group’s social expectations, and the bullies pounce on this difference. There’s nothing wrong with Bonnie; she’s just at a slightly different social developmental stage and has different interests from her peers.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) points out that your specific child has unique strengths and challenges and these need to be considered carefully when deciding how and whether to incorporate technology into their lives. Bonnie may be ready for a tablet, but clearly needs more support navigating a group chat and how to use the software in ways that support her social and emotional development.

3. Technology isn’t good or bad, it’s how you use it.

We see several examples of technology used positively throughout the film. One of the characters is a fancy digital potty training tool. A family uses the GPS on a parent’s phone to find their campsite. A toy camera shows off photos of the family’s trip to Disney.

The AAP expands upon this, emphasizing that not all screen time is equal. As I write in my book Parenting a Gamer, watching a documentary, video chatting with Grandma, and following along with an instructional yoga video all use screens, but are obviously different from a series of ten-second, AI-generated clips on YouTube Shorts. This is one reason why it’s so important to be aware of what your kids are doing on screens, rather than treating it as a monolith.

4. Imaginative play is important.

Throughout the film, Bonnie’s toy Jessie argues that imaginative play is crucial for children. She’s right.

Play is how we first explore the world around us. It provides us a chance to safely connect with others, practice social situations, develop hand-eye coordination, and explore identity. Child therapists often use play therapeutically to help children understand themselves and their emotions. Children often replay frightening events through play as a way to process those stressors.

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5. Screens can facilitate bullying.

I regularly see clients in my practice that need support navigating social situations online. Many of my adolescent clients come in week after week to describe dizzying webs of screenshotted insults, being removed from or excluded from group texts, who’s allowed to see private posts, who’s been tagged in what posts, the subtleties of posting something on Snapchat vs. Instagram, etc. School bullies aren’t limited to the playground anymore. They live in your pocket on the same device you use to call your parents for a ride.

Even apps like Instagram that promise to protect children and teens are ineffective at stopping harm. One research group found that Meta routinely allowed obviously harmful messages through their filtering system, even on teen accounts. Social media and other forms of digital communication can clearly facilitate social harm.

However…

6. Screens can help you find your people.

I work with a lot of young people who have trouble fitting in. Like Bonnie, the kids at school have different interests and don’t understand them. Many of my clients are autistic* and follow different social conventions. The social rules they’re expected to follow at school aren’t intuitive and my clients often struggle to keep up.

However, when they’re around similar people, usually those who are also neurodivergent, they usually fit right in. In other words, autistic people don’t have poor social skills; they have autistic social skills. This is called the double empathy problem; neurotypical people have trouble communicating with neurodivergent people and vice versa. Neither communication style is better than the other—the mismatch is what causes problems.

Similarly, if Bonnie’s peers don’t “get” her, she will probably need help understanding and navigating their social expectations so that she can survive school. She may also need help and guidance in finding people who will accept her for who she is and people she can trust to be her whole, authentic self around. At the end of the movie, Bonnie connects through technology with a friendly, outgoing girl who shares her interests and quirky communication style. When used this way, screen time can be a useful tool to help find friends.

*Although many refer to autistic people as people with autism or people with autism spectrum disorder, almost 90 percent of autistic adults prefer autistic person. This language is used here to respect that preference.

Read more in Parenting a Gamer: Help Your Child Build Healthy Habits, Make Positive Choices, and Find Balance in Virtual Worlds.