Toy Story 5 Opens Up a Wound Parents Didn’t Even Realize was Still Healing

The first four Toy Story movies were released from 1995-2019. In the first movie, Buzz Lightyear’s flashy buttons are the biggest threat to Woody and the gang. When we get to Toy Story 4, it’s 2019 and Bonnie is in preschool. In the Toy Story universe devices are largely absent and in our world tweens have devices but not many preschoolers.

Now, in 2026, we parents have largely forgiven ourselves for the pandemic parenting style of ‘What’s a little more screen time? This won’t last forever.” That’s until Toy Story 5 decides to take us on the kind of emotional guilt trip usually reserved for Tony Soprano at the hands of his mother.

In this Toy Story universe sleep overs are just zombie children looking at screens, bullying is easy, kids are scared to talk to each other, and parents are on zoom convincing their co-workers they really are on mute.

Toy Story 5 is set in 2026 and opens with 8 year old Bonnie happily playing with her favorite toys. She's the master of a world she built full of intrigue, joy, and love. That is until the twins next door come home. Now, Bonnie is transformed into a scared girl praying the twins don’t see her. Bonnie wants to make friends but doesn’t know how.

Bonnie was 2 in March 2020 and pandemic protocols meant her first playtime with friends included adults wiping down toys, stopping kids from sharing or touching while playing, and more alone time if she runs a fever or is exposed to COVID-19. Between ages 2 and 5, children normally get thousands of small, ordinary repetitions of social play: watching other kids, playing beside them, copying them, sharing toys, negotiating roles, pretending together, handling conflict, waiting turns, and learning how to repair after things go wrong. But the necessary and important COVID-19 pandemic protocols disrupted this for Bonnie, and tons of kids like her.

Bonnie’s parents see her struggling and want to help. You can feel their reservations as they order the Lillypad device. In the audience parents are watching helplessly knowing these parents are basically the teenagers in a horror thinking they can get away by running up the stairs in the old creepy house.

When Bonnie’s mom says “you can play tonight but tomorrow we’ll set up strict screen time rules,” every parent took a big handful of popcorn and said ‘oh you sweet summer child.’ For many of us who swore our kids would not get a device in elementary school it started as a perceived necessity. We promised we would only use the device for school, barbie playdates, and grandparents on zoom. Smash cut to 6 months after our kid got their first screen and we’re touring their 8th mansion on Roblox and talking to them about  the etiquette of spam texting.

All parents want our kids to be social, happy, and included. The promise of friendship is what motivates us to take the calculated risk to let our kids join in on the group chat, gaming, and YouTube watch parties.

Parents did not hand over a screen because we stopped believing in childhood. We did it because childhood had changed faster than our confidence could keep up.

The hopeful lesson of Toy Story 5 is not that every parent needs to go home, throw away all the tech, and teach your kids to write letters to communicate. That’s not helpful either. The lesson is parents need to give their kids a little extra TLC and prodding to encourage real life interactions.  Children who were toddlers and preschoolers during 2020–2022 lost some ordinary chances to practice peer play during the exact years when peer play normally becomes more interactive. Now those children are older, and some of the missed practice shows up as social hesitation, shorter frustration tolerance, more difficulty with group play, more reliance on adult mediation, or a stronger pull toward comfort from screens.

Kids need a nudge to take on low-stakes chances to be awkward and survive it. They need to knock on a neighbor’s door, invite someone over, order at a restaurant, lose a game, make up a rule, get bored, get mad, try again. They need adults who understand that social confidence is not a personality trait. It is a muscle. And for many kids who were toddlers during the pandemic, that muscle simply had fewer chances to grow.

The good news is that muscles respond to repetition.

Your kid may have a screen in their world now, but we still decide if that screen becomes their entire world. There are still toys under the bed. There are still neighbors next door. There are still children who want to play but do not know how to begin.

Toy Story 5 hurts because it reminds us what was interrupted. It also helps because it reminds us that we can rebuild.