Toy Story 5’s haters are wrong about its anti-tech message

The main selling point being used to promote Toy Story 5 is that it’s all about “toys vs. tech.” And while Pixar’s latest outing is already expected to be one of the biggest movies of the year, there definitely is a contingency out there claiming the movie is pushing outdated message or “for boomers” or that it’s wrong-headed altogether for drawing artificial lines between different types of play. Even as a fairly anti-screentime parent of an 11-year-old myself, I feared Toy Story 5 would go too hard on its anti-tech messaging. The last thing I want when I see a movie is to be preached at, even for a point I agree with.

Fortunately, Toy Story 5 takes a far more thoughtful and nuanced perspective towards kids and technology than the trailers can hope to communicate.

Warning: Major spoilers ahead for Toy Story 5

In Toy Story 5, eight-year-old Bonnie (Scarlett Spears) is delighted to get her very first tablet, but her toys, now led by Jessie (Joan Cusack), feel sidelined by the device. Besides the reaction of the toys, the movie also captures the real-life downsides of getting a dive to a young child. As soon as she gets the tablet, Bonnie becomes consumed with it, glaring into the screen at close range for hours a day and not listening to her parents when it is in use. Even when she’s not using it, she clutches it closely like a security blanket. Later in the movie, an especially powerful moment sees Bonnie getting cyber-bullied in a group chat with kids from her dance class. While it’s done in a pretty simplistic way, it’s an important inclusion in the story. Cyberbullying isn’t just a problem kids face nowadays, it’s an epidemic that has led to extremely serious consequences for children, even suicides.

Writer-director Andrew Stanton also draws a line between the type of play done with an electronic device vs. the kind of play a kid engages in with toys and that’s because there is a difference. Studies have shown that the kind of imaginative play that involves children playing with toys is essential for their development. Meanwhile, pre-programmed technology-based games do not foster creativity. Obviously, educational apps exist, and there are artistic apps that do engage children creatively, but those aren’t the kinds of games Bonnie plays. We mostly see her playing a mindless game where turtles run in a circle and tag each other.

Fortunately, Toy Story 5 manages to make all of these points without laying it on too thick. Just like Wall-E had a vibrant environmentalist message that never overtook its story, Toy Story 5 takes a stance on tech, but it isn’t obnoxious about it. Stanton makes his point in a way that befits the best qualities of Pixar’s storytelling, which means it includes plenty of nuance about technology and even highlights some of its advantages too.

The very first thoughtful argument in the film comes right at the beginning, when it explains why Bonnie’s parents are buying a tablet for their eight-year-old. It’s not because she’s arbitrarily “old enough.” They do it because Bonnie is lonely and all of her prospective friends have these devices. They figure getting her one will help her connect with other kids. Eventually, the tablet does precisely that. It’s directly because of her electronic device that Bonnie connects with Blaze, a quirky girl who lives on a farm and still loves to play with toys as much as Bonnie does.

Also, Jessie undergoes a change of heart over technology throughout the course of the film. While she hates Bonnie’s new device, Lilypad (Greta Lee), in the beginning of the movie, the tech toys at Blaze’s house — led by Conan O’Brien as the hilarious toilet-training toy Smarty Pants — teach her that are toys too and can also be fun to play with. Jessie even finds herself drawn into an electronic game installed on Smarty Pants. At the end of the movie, after Jessie and Lilypad have learned they can both have a place in Bonnie’s life, Lilypad is depicted as part of the gang during a playtime with Bonnie and Blaze.

The fact that Lilypad does end up helping Bonnie find a friend, and that Lilypad is included in the playtime with the other toys, shows that the movie is more complex than it appears. While Stanton clearly, and accurately, illustrates the dangers and downsides of giving young children that kind of device, it’s never nearly as simple as “tech bad” and “toys good.” Instead, Toy Story 5 takes the more nuanced view that technology can have its place in a child’s life, as long as it’s not allowed to be all-consuming.